*3- 

1 '  - 

-v| 

is! 

\ 

• 

1  •; 

I  s; 

‘>4 

■ 

H 

\-x 

WJs 

[•-; 

r.-.Tj 

• 

W&  H  Bp 

il 

j  He 

m  M  %~y 

»  ma  MJI.'.  .: 

1 

m  «  \'-:y. 

- 

i  IS 

«».  « 

Hr 

■ 

JUL  2  191(1 

(GAL 


Division 


IDS 1 0  7 


Section  * 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


THE  FRENCH  IN  THE  HEART 
OF  AMERICA 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/pilgriminpalestiOOfinl 


From  the  painting  by  James  McBey.  Copyright  by  the  British  Bureau  of  Information. 

General  Allenby  entering  Jerusalem,  December  11,  1917. 


V 


JUL  &  19] 


A  PILGRIM 


& 


'[OSIOM  SB- 


IN  PALESTINE 


BEING  AN  ACCOUNT  OF 
JOURNEYS  ON  FOOT  BY  THE  FIRST  AMERICAN 
PILGRIM  AFTER  GENERAL  ALLENBY’s 
RECOVERY  OF  THE  HOLY  LAND 


BY 

JOHN  FINLEY 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER’S  SONS 

1919 


Copyright,  1918,  1919,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER’S  SONS 

Published  April,  1919 

Copyright,  1901,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS 
COPYRIGHT.  1918,  BY  THE  OUTLOOK  COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY 


PREFACE 


A  FEW  nights  before  I  left  America 
for  the  Holy  Land,  she  who  was 
Eleanor  Robson  and  who  as  Mrs. 
August  Belmont  has  done  such  womanly 
valiant  work  for  the  Red  Cross,  gave  me  a 
copy  of  a  letter  written  by  a  British  “Tom¬ 
my”  out  in  Palestine  to  his  wife  in  Eng¬ 
land.  I  have  carried  it  to  Palestine  and 
back  and  from  Jaffa  to  Jericho  and  from 
Beersheba  to  Dan;  and  now  I  make  it  my 
preface  to  this  unpremeditated  book  which 
has  grown  out  of  some  casual  notes  made 
especially  for  the  “pastor”: 

“Ay,  Dearie — When  I  comes  home  again  and 
please  God  that  will  be  soon  now  Dearie,  the 
Pastor  can’t  say  nothin’  to  me  Dearie  about  the 
Holy  Land,  but  I’ll  have  sommat  to  say  to  he.  He 

only  knows  it  from  books  and  such  like  Dearie,  an’ 

[vii] 


PREFACE 


showed  it  on  lantern  slides — while  all  these  days 
I’m  here  walkin’  in  holy  places,  an’  knows  ’em  like 
Dearie,  fightin’  for  ’em,  which  you  would  be  sur¬ 
prised  to  know  where  I’m  writin’  Dearie.  Ay  !  I’ll 
have  zommat  to  say  to  Pastor,  so  will  close  Dearie. — 

“From  your  loving  husband.” 

I’ve  seen  him  out  there  walking  in  holy 
places.  I’ve  enviously  seen  him  fighting  for 
them.  And  now  I  have  to  thank  him  and 
his  great  leaders  for  making  it  possible  for 
Christendom  to  walk  again  in  its  holy  places 
free  of  the  Turk.  I  assume  to  say  this  word 
of  gratitude  for  Christendom  because  I  was 
the  first  of  pilgrims  to  follow  “Tommy  ”  into 
some  of  them,  the  first  to  walk  the  breadth 
and  the  length  of  the  Holy  Land  after  its 
deliverance. 

I  am  consenting  to  the  publication  of 
these  notes  in  the  hope  that  they  may  help 
other  pilgrims,  and  especially  those  who  can¬ 
not  in  person  go  and  on  foot  to  these  holy 

[  viii  ] 


PREFACE 


places,  to  recover  this  little  land  again  for 
themselves.  More  particularly,  I  hope  that 
these  pages  may  be  found  to  have  some¬ 
what  in  them  for  the  “pastor,”  of  what¬ 
ever  creed,  who  can  only  know  this  land 
of  his  devoted  daily  traversing  “from  books 
and  such  like”  and  lantern  slides;  though  I 
do  not  pretend  to  speak  to  him  as  a  Biblical 
scholar  or  to  vouch  for  the  authenticity  of 
all  the  local  traditions  which  I  unquestion- 
ingly  accept. 

But  beyond  this  I  should  like,  in  grati¬ 
tude  to  her  who  made  Palestine  the  near¬ 
est  other  country  of  my  boyhood,  to  help 
put  upon  the  horizon  of  all  America  this 
religious  homestead  of  Christian  and  Jew, 
of  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike;  not  alone 
that  we  may  still  learn  of  its  ancient  and 
sacred  teaching  but  that  we  may  too  bring 
our  glory  into  it. 

John  Finley. 


[ix] 


CONTENTS 


I. 

The  Way  to  the  Holy  Land  . 

FAGS 

3 

“Via  Dei.”  Poem . 

5 

II. 

General  Allenby.  (With  Intro¬ 
ductory  Note) . 

7 

III. 

The  Camel-Train.  Poem 

45 

IV. 

On  the  Mount  of  Olives  in  the 
Year  of  Our  Lord  1918  . 

46 

V. 

Ain  Karim.  Poem . 

64 

VI. 

From  Jaffa  to  Jericho  .... 

66 

VII. 

St.  Dismas.  Poem . 

92 

VIII. 

From  Beersheba . 

94 

IX. 

I  Walked  Last  Night  in  the  Shep¬ 
herds’  Field.  Poem  .... 

124 

X. 

To  Dan . 

[si] 

126 

CONTENTS 


XI. 

Armageddon.  Poem  .... 

PAGE 

.  163 

XII. 

Beyond  Jordan  . 

.  170 

The  Rose  of  Jericho.  Poem  . 

.  204 

XIII. 

The  House  of  My  Pilgrimage 

.  205 

XIV. 

A  la  Terre  Sainte.  Poem  . 

.  247 

XV. 

Odysseus’  Bark.  Poem  . 

.  250 

ILLUSTRATIONS 


General  Allenby  entering  Jerusalem,  December  11, 

1917 . Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

The  First  British  arriving  at  Jaffa  Gate,  December 

9,  1917 .  8 

General  Edmund  H.  H.  Allenby,  the  Commander-in- 

Chief,  at  Headquarters  near  Ramleh  ...  10 

The  Crusaders’  Tower  near  Ramleh . 14 

Colonel  Ronald  Storrs  at  the  Golden  Gate  when 
making  a  tour  of  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  with 
the  author . 18 

“Iambic,  bearing  each  its  mystic  load”  ....  45 

Via  Dolorosa.  Mount  of  Olives  in  the  distance  .  50 


Jerusalem  as  seen  from  the  Mount  of  Olives  .  .  58 

Woman  at  the  Spring  of  Ain  Karim,  reputed  home  of 

Elizabeth . 64 

Road  to  Jericho.  Mountains  of  Moab  in  the  dis¬ 
tance  . 82 


The  graves  of  English  soldiers  under  a  tree  at  the 
foot  of  the  Last  Hill  before  reaching  Jerusalem, 
on  the  Jaffa-Jerusalem  Road . 

[  xiii  ] 


84 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


FACING  PAGE 

Mount  of  Olives  as  seen  from  St.  Stephen’s  Gate  .  88 

A  scene  in  Jericho . 90 

The  temple  area  on  Mount  Moriah . 96 

The  author  as  he  appeared  after  going  from  Beer- 

sheba  to  Jerusalem . 120 

Tower  of  the  Ascension  on  the  Mount  of  Olives  in  the 
background.  Belfry  of  Greek  Chapel  in  the 
foreground . 122 

Evacuated  village  near  the  front . 130 

Abandoned  German  lorry  on  hill  just  outside  of 

Nazareth . 156 

Carpenter  and  boy  in  Nazareth . 158 

Franciscan  brother  (Sebastian)  in  a  grotto  back  of 
the  Church  of  the  Annunciation  in  Nazareth, 
making  altar  wafers  just  after  the  occupation  .  160 

Two  shepherd  boys  on  the  hills  of  Galilee  .  .  .  190 

View  of  the  Sea  of  Galilee  from  Tiberias  ....  192 

Colonel  T.  E.  Lawrence  in  Arab  costume  .  .  .  198 

Odysseus’  Bark . 250 


[  xiv  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


I 


THE  WAY  TO  THE  HOLY  LAND 


THE  way  leading  to  the  Holy  Land 
in  the  time  of  the  Crusades  was 
called  the  44 Via  Dei” — the  way  of 
God.  It  was  a  devious  way,  but  if  only  it 
led  toward  the  Holy  City  it  was  the  “Via 
Dei.” — For  a  little  company  of  devoted  and 
skilled  doctors,  nurses,  social  workers,  and 
sanitary  engineers,  under  the  guidance  of  a 
young  and  capable  surgeon  who  had  taught 
for  years  in  Syria,  it  led  from  New  York 
City,  in  March  of  1918,  by  ship  around  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  to  Ceylon,  and  by  the 
Suez  to  Port  Said,  and  thence  by  rail  to 
Jerusalem.  I  cannot  in  this  book  tell  of 
this  crusade  of  mercy.  It  was  my  great 
privilege  to  join  these  crusaders  in  Egypt, 

[3] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


going  myself  a  month  later  from  the  same 
American  port  by  way  of  England,  France, 
Italy,  Albania,  Serbia,  Macedonia,  and  the 
^Egean  Sea  to  Port  Said.  But  from  Egypt 
I  found  a  swifter  way  than  any  crusader 
ever  dreamed  of.  I  found  the  “Via  Dei”  in 
the  skies ;  and  in  two  and  one-half  hours  de¬ 
scended  upon  the  foot-hills  of  the  land 
which  the  children  of  Israel  were  forty 
years  in  reaching  by  their  roundabout  way. 


[41 


THE  WAY  TO  THE  HOLY  LAND 


“VIA  DEI” 

I 

“Via  Dei” — this  the  sacred  phrase 
By  which  they  named  the  thousand  ways 
That  led  from  palace  and  from  cell, 

From  hut  and  shop  and  citadel, 

O’er  mountain,  river,  sea,  and  plain. 

Through  heat  and  cold  and  drought  and  rain. 
Toward  the  Holy  Land. 

II 

But  with  the  wings  of  morning  I 
A  “via  Dei”  of  the  sky 
Have  found  amid  the  paths  of  light 
Where  airmen  make  their  pilgrim  flight 
High  in  the  heav’ns — the  ways  ne’er  trod 
Save  by  the  glowing  feet  of  God 
Above  the  Holy  Land. 


f5] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


III 

O’er  Pyramid  and  Sphinx  we  flew, 
Dry-shod  th’  unparted  sea  passed  through, 
Crossed  in  an  hour  the  wilderness, 

Saw  Sinai  looming  terrorless, 

High  o’er  the  gates  of  Gaza  leapt, 

And  low  across  the  plain  of  Sharon  swept 
Into  the  Holy  Land. 

IV 

And  then  I  saw  Jerusalem 
Lying  an  opalescent  gem, 

Or  breastplate,  ’mid  the  ephod’s  blue 
And  gold  and  purple  ambient  hue, — 

A  city  from  the  skies  let  down 
To  be  henceforth  the  whole  earth’s  crown 
Set  ’mid  the  Holy  Land. 


[6] 


II 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 

Before  beginning  my  pilgrimage  on 
foot  in  the  Holy  Land,  I  wish  to  make 
known  to  the  reader  the  great  soldier  and 
man  whose  recovery  of  the  Holy  Land 
opened  the  roads  to  my  going  and  whose 
interest  in  my  journeys  there  made  him 
my  companion  in  the  way — General  Allen- 
by,  who  was  for  the  time  being  my  Com- 
mander-in-Chief.  I  do  not  pretend  to 
speak  out  of  an  intimate  acquaintance 
with  him  nor  as  one  to  whom  any  con¬ 
fidences  were  given,  but  merely  as  one  who 
saw  him  several  times  amid  the  dust  of 
the  road,  or  in  the  streets  of  the  Holy  City, 
or  out  at  his  Headquarters  near  Ramleh, 
in  the  days  when  the  greatest  event  of  all 

[7] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


the  centuries  of  the  Christian  era  since 
the  first  was  being  enacted  and  under  his 
guidance;  with  a  confidence,  as  he  said 
to  his  troops  August  4,  1918,  “based  on 
the  justice  of  our  cause  and  faith  in  the 
sustaining  help  of  the  Almighty/’ 


IT  HAVE  to  begin  by  taking  away  from 
the  reader  a  doubtlessly  treasured  pic¬ 
ture  of  the  great  Commander-in-Chief 
entering  Jerusalem.  The  immortal  fact 
of  the  entrance  I  do  not  disturb.  Nor  do 
I  touch  the  background  of  the  picture 
which  the  ex-Kaiser  provided  when  he 
caused  a  new  gate  to  be  cut  in  the  thick 
walls  of  the  Holy  City,  a  few  feet  from  the 
old  Jaffa  Gate,  in  order  to  signalize  his 
own  entry  in  1898 — a  pompous  entry  which 
now  seems  so  childishly,  if  not  insanely 
vain.  I  found  in  a  church  in  Jerusalem  a 

[8] 


''  '  #*  /s'"''"' 

■  ■  .  •  : 


The  First  British  arriving  at  Jaffa  Gate,  December  9,  1917. 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


photograph  of  the  painting  which  the 
Kaiser  had  caused  to  be  made  of  that  en¬ 
try,  showing  himself  attired  in  the  helmet 
and  white  garb  of  a  Crusader,  on  a  capar¬ 
isoned  white  horse,  riding  at  the  head  of  a 
procession  with  imperial  banners,  an  awed 
welcome  being  painted  on  the  faces  of  the 
people. 

When  General  Allenby  entered  it  was 
by  the  same  gate  (for  he  declined  to  have 
the  “ Golden  Gate”  opened  for  him), 
on  foot,  and  without  so  much  as  a  single 
victorious  flag.  But — and  this  is  why  the 
picture  in  the  memory  of  so  many  must  be 
revised — General  Allenby  did  not  appear 
in  the  most  conspicuous  place.  He  mod¬ 
estly  kept  that  position  which  was  his  ac¬ 
cording  to  British  custom.  It  was  an  aide 
who  marched  first. 

So  it  was  that  when  I  first  saw  General 
Allenby  with  my  own  eyes  I  had  suddenly 

[o] 


A  PILGKIM  IN  PALESTINE 


to  make  over  my  own  image  of  him.  It 
was  another  man  than  the  one  whom  I 
had  pictured  that  greeted  me  at  General 
Headquarters  in  the  valley  between  the 
hills  of  Judaea  and  the  sea,  where  the 
“  embassies  and  armies  of  two  continents 
had  passed  to  and  fro”:  of  Thothmes  and 
Raineses,  Tiglath-Pileser,  Shalmaneser  and 
Sargon,  Sennacherib,  Necho  and  Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar,  Cambyses  and  Alexander  the 
Great,  Geoffrey,  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion, 
and  Napoleon.  Here  I  was  face  to  face 
with  the  real  Deliverer  of  the  Holy  Land. 

I  suppose  that  a  German  general  im¬ 
presses  one  first  of  all  as  a  soldier,  but — 
and  it  may  be  due  in  part  to  the  semi¬ 
civilian  British  uniform — the  English  of¬ 
ficer  impresses  one  first  of  all  as  a  man. 
When  I  saw  General  Allenby  I  did  not 
think  of  this  man  of  powerful  shoulders, 
of  high  forehead,  of  the  kindliest  of  eyes, 

[10] 


General  Edmund  H.  H.  Allenby,  the 
Commander-in-Chief,  at  Head¬ 
quarters  near  Ramleh. 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


of  blunt,  staccato  speech,  and  of  most 
genial  manner,  as  a  soldier.  I  was  in  the 
presence  of  a  great  human  being.  And  it 
was  so  when  I  met  Marshal  Foch,  in  the 
days  before  he  was  a  marshal. 

It  was  at  General  Headquarters  that  I 
first  saw  General  Allenby.  I  had  driven 
over  from  Jerusalem  with  one  of  my  Red 
Cross  associates  to  spend  the  night  with 
the  “C-in-C,”  or  the  “Chief,”  as  he  is 
called  by  his  officers  and  men.  And  I 
may  at  this  distance  confess  that  I  went 
with  some  timidity.  In  the  first  place,  I 
was  not  yet  inured  to  my  military  title 
(and  that  was  the  only  one  by  which  I  was 
known  out  there).  In  the  next  place,  I 
had  never  had  an  acquaintance  with  the 
British  beyond  that  of  meeting  a  few  of 
them  visiting  in  America,  and  I  was  an¬ 
ticipating  a  frigid  formality  even  in  that 
semitropical  and  remote  country. 

[11] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


But  I  soon  forgot,  in  the  warmth  of  the 
reception,  that  my  host  was  a  general  and 
that  I  was  not  a  civilian,  that  he  was  an 
overcritical  Britisher  and  I  a  provincial 
American.  We  soon  found  ourselves  fel¬ 
low  inhabitants  of  ancient  Palestine — of  the 
Old  Testament  land.  And  when  we  left 
the  dinner-table  it  was  to  pore  over  George 
Adam  Smith’s  “Geography  of  the  Holy 
Land” — a  classic  which  is  more  than  a 
geography,  a  veritable  epic  poem  in  prose 
form — and  then  to  turn  to  certain  passages 
in  the  Old  Testament. 

It  is  not  the  part  of  a  guest  to  speak 
of  what  he  has  seen  and  heard  at  Head¬ 
quarters,  and  certainly  what  was  said  that 
night  was  not  intended  for  hearing  beyond 
the  walls  of  the  old  farmhouse,  temporarily 
used  as  Headquarters;  but  I  am  sure  that 
the  Commander-in-Chief  will  let  me  share 
my  memory  of  it  with  others,  especially  as 
it  can  give  no  comfort  to  the  enemy. 

[12] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


I  remember  particularly  that  we  read 
the  thirty-fourth  chapter  of  the  Book  of 
Isaiah,  in  which  the  utter  destruction  of 
this  land  (once  the  Land  of  Promise)  was 
prophesied,  when  the  streams  should  be 
“turned  into  pitch,”  when  thorns  “should 
come  up  in  her  palaces,  and  nettles  and 
brambles  in  the  fortresses  thereof.”  And 
I  recall  asking  him,  who  had  come  up  into 
the  land  by  way  of  the  Desert,  whether 
the  “pelican  and  the  porcupine”  were  ac¬ 
tually  to  be  found  there;  what  the  “ar- 
rowsnake”  was,  and  the  “night-monster”; 
what  sort  of  a  cry  the  “satyr”  made  in 
calling  to  his  fellow;  whether  “ostriches” 
still  held  court  in  the  land,  and  jackals 
still  “made  it  their  habitation”?  I  dis¬ 
covered  that  he  knew  the  fauna  of  this 
prophecy  of  desolation,  and  that  he  sup¬ 
ported  by  a  Bible  dictionary  his  own 
theories  as  to  the  identity  of  these  crea¬ 
tures,  whose  names  varied  in  the  different 

[13] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


versions.  The  prophesied  desolation  had 
certainly  come  upon  the  land.  The  “line 
of  confusion”  had  been  stretched  over  it 
for  centuries.  And  the  “plummet  of  emp¬ 
tiness”  had  touched  even  its  valleys  that 
once  “flowed  with  milk  and  honey.” 

It  was  not  many  nights  later  that, 
within  five  miles  of  the  very  place  where 
we  sat  reading  this  chapter  in  Isaiah,  I 
heard  in  our  Red  Cross  camp,  within  moon¬ 
light  sight  of  the  Crusaders’  Tower  that 
still  stands  in  Ramleh,  the  mournful,  half¬ 
human  cry  of  jackals,  giving  literal  con¬ 
firmation  of  the  prophecy.  And  another 
night  I  heard  the  same  cry  from  hundreds, 
or  so  they  seemed  in  number,  out  upon 
the  sand  plain  just  beyond  the  Jordan, 
near  the  place  where  the  children  of  Israel 
must  have  crossed  into  this  very  Land  of 
Promise. 

But  I  read  on  into  the  thirty -fifth  chap- 

[14] 


The  Crusaders’  Tower  near  Ramleh. 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


ter — the  chapter  of  the  prophecy  of  the 
Great  Restoration,  which  was  also  seem¬ 
ingly  coming  to  pass.  And  the  imperious 
but  modest  man  before  me  was  the  Re¬ 
storer.  In  the  habitation  of  the  jackals 
grass  was  beginning  to  grow  again;  “glow¬ 
ing  sands”  had  become  pools.  Waters 
had  literally  broken  out  in  the  wilderness 
and  streams  in  the  Desert.  All  the  way 
up  from  Egypt,  nearly  one  hundred  and 
fifty  miles,  has  the  water  of  the  Nile  been 
led  to  break  forth  in  the  places  of  desola¬ 
tion. 

There  is  an  Arab  legend  which  I  heard 
often  out  in  the  East,  that  not  until  the 
Nile  flowed  into  Palestine  would  the  Turk 
be  driven  from  Jerusalem — a  picturesque 
way  of  intimating  that  the  Turk  would 
stay  there  forever  (as  in  Virgil’s  First 
Eclogue  a  like  prophecy  was  made,  two 
thousand  years  ago,  of  the  impossibility 

[15] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


of  the  Germans  reaching  the  Tigris).  But 
the  Nile  now  flows  into  Palestine,  not 
metaphorically  but  literally.  I  have  seen 
the  plant  at  Kantara,  where  (under  the  di¬ 
rection  of  a  Canadian  engineer)  the  sweet 
water  of  the  Nile  is  filtered  and  started  on 
its  journey  through  a  twelve-inch  pipe 
across  the  Desert  toward  Gaza.  The 
mound  of  sand  that  protects  it  is  visible 
a  few  yards  from  the  railroad  all  the  way 
from  the  Suez  to  the  edge  of  Palestine. 
And  the  Turk  has  been  driven  from  Jeru¬ 
salem  by  the  same  forces  that  caused  the 
water  of  the  Nile  to  flow  into  Palestine. 

I  have  wondered  whether  those  who  se¬ 
lected  General  Allenby  for  this  command 
were  influenced  to  the  selection  in  any  de¬ 
gree  by  his  name.  Not  that  there  is  need 
of  reason  beyond  his  surpassing  technical 
and  personal  qualifications  to  lead  this  par¬ 
ticular  expedition.  But  it  is  a  singular  co- 

[16] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


incidence  and  a  happy  omen  that  his  very 
name  may  well  be  interpreted  to  carry  a 
prophecy  of  his  achievement.  I  suspect 
that  it  is  of  Irish  association,  but  an  Oriental 
origin  may  easily  be  found  for  it  in  the 
euphonious  union  of  two  Arab  words,  “Al¬ 
lah”  meaning  “God,”  and  “Nebi”  meaning 
“prophet.”  So  “Allah-Nebi,”  a  God- 
prophet.  And  surely  no  one  in  the  history 
of  Palestine  in  the  Christian  era  has  come 
with  a  more  Godlike  prophecy.  If  it  were 
not  known  that  every  movement  of  his 
campaign  of  deliverance  was  planned  down 
to  the  last  meticulous  detail,  what  he  has 
accomplished  would  seem  a  miracle,  some¬ 
thing  of  supernatural  achievement. 

It  is  gratifying  that  the  Deliverer  of  Pal¬ 
estine  is  a  man  who  exemplifies  the  qualities 
that  civilization  seeks  to  develop  in  mankind 
under  free  institutions,  courage,  courtesy, 
honesty — those  qualities  which  our  Justice 

[17] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


Holmes  has  summarized  in  the  “adorable 
faith”  of  the  soldier.  And  not  only  is  Gen¬ 
eral  Allenby  the  sort  of  a  man  whom  the 
civilization  that  had  its  cradle  in  the  Holy 
Land  would  choose  to  represent  it,  but  he 
has  in  turn  chosen  men  of  noblest,  cleanest 
purpose  and  highest  qualification  to  serve 
with  him  in  helping  the  people  of  that  land 
to  come  into  the  full  fruits  of  justice  and 
freedom.  For  example,  the  chief  of  the 
Occupied  Enemy  Territory  Administration 
(for  they  do  not  call  it  conquered  territory 
or  British  territory,  and  no  flag  did  I  see 
flying  anywhere  in  Palestine  except  the  Red 
Cross  flag  over  hospitals),  the  chief  of 
O.  E.  T.  A.,  General  Sir  Arthur  Money,  who 
had  been  Chief  of  Staff  under  General 
Maude  at  Bagdad,  is  as  high-minded,  con¬ 
scientious,  and  just  a  man  and  adminis¬ 
trator  as  I  have  ever  known.  Another  is 
Colonel  Ronald  Storrs,  military  governor  of 

[18] 


Colonel  Ronald  Storrs  at  the  Golden  Gate  when  making  a  tour  of  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  with  the  author. 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


Jerusalem,  a  highest-honor  man  at  Cam¬ 
bridge,  who  has  lived  and  labored  and  stud¬ 
ied  in  the  East  for  the  most  of  his  life  since 
he  left  the  university.  He  speaks  Arabic 
and  Turkish,  besides  the  classical  languages 
and  those  of  modern  Europe.  And  one 
morning  I  came  upon  him  composing  a  New 
Year’s  greeting  in  Hebrew  to  the  Jewish 
residents  of  Jerusalem.  I  have  said  again 
and  again  that  I  could  wish  no  better  fate 
for  Palestine  and  the  Holy  City  than  that 
their  people  should  be  guided  by  such  men 
as  these  till  they  reach  their  own  self-deter¬ 
mined  government,  and  that  even  then  they 
should  have  relation  to  the  Christendom 
that  has  sprung  from  this  land,  through 
men  of  such  liberal  ideals  and  just  and  rev¬ 
erent  spirit. 

I  invited  the  Commander-in-Chief,  be¬ 
fore  I  left  him  that  June  night  in  Ramleh, 
to  join  us  on  the  Fourth  of  July  in  Jerusa- 

[19] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


lem,  in  opening  our  Red  Cross  headquarters 
and  in  celebrating  incidentally  our  natal 
day.  And  he  came,  covered  with  the  dust 
of  the  thirty-mile  automobile  journey  on 
that  hot  July  afternoon.  We  emphasized 
the  fact  that,  while  this  was  Independence 
Day,  the  birthday  of  the  Daughter  of  Eng¬ 
land,  we  celebrated  it  now  as  “Interdepen¬ 
dence  Day.”  He,  in  response,  with  his 
curt,  soldier  speech,  made  the  day  mem¬ 
orable  for  Americans  in  that  part  of  the 
world,  and  notable  among  the  Fourth  of 
July  celebrations  in  all  parts  of  the  world. 
But,  in  compliance  with  a  courteous  inti¬ 
mation  from  Headquarters,  no  flag  was  fly¬ 
ing  over  our  building.  There  was  to  be  no 
sign  of  any  foreign  nation  in  the  Palestinian 
skies  even  on  that  day.  This  did  not  pre¬ 
vent,  however,  the  intertwining  of  the  em¬ 
blems  of  the  Allies  inside  the  building,  where 
the  Commander-in-Chief,  surrounded  by 

.[  20] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


the  representatives  of  France,  Italy,  and 
America,  as  well  as  by  his  own  officers  and 
by  the  heads  of  the  various  religious  com¬ 
munities  in  Jerusalem — Moslem,  Jewish, 
Greek,  Latin,  Armenian,  and  Protestant — 
illustrated  the  ideal  state  which  I  hope  will 
some  day  rise  to  give  more  glorious  fulfil¬ 
ment  than  that  even  of  which  Isaiah  made 
prophecy  in  the  chapter  which  I  read  with 
the  General  that  night  down  at  the  entrance 
to  the  Plain  of  Ajalon — at  Ajalon,  where,  I 
found,  they  so  scrupulously  depended  upon 
known  meteorological  laws  that  they  did 
not,  as  Joshua,  count  upon  any  supernatural 
intervention  to  stay  the  sun  in  its  setting 
over  the  plain,  but  synchronized  their 
watches  three  times  in  the  day  before  going 
into  battle  in  order  to  take  full  advantage 
of  the  sun  and  to  make  even  the  stars 
4 4  fight  with  them.” 

But  there  was  a  more  significant  day  in 

[21] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


my  acquaintance  with  General  Allenby  than 
that  in  whose  night  I  read  the  prophecy. 
It  was  the  day  in  which  one  caught  a  glimpse 
of  the  Apocalyptic  vision  rather  than  of  the 
Isaian.  I  was  again  at  Headquarters.  It 
was  the  morning  of  the  20th  of  September, 
when  the  army  that  had  “dug  in”  fifteen  or 
twenty  miles  north  of  Jerusalem,  and  had 
waited  patiently  for  months,  was  at  last 
advancing  to  the  complete  recovery  of  the 
Holy  Land.  (It  was  ready  to  make  the 
attack  in  May,  I  have  heard,  and  the  day 
was  set,  but  the  exigencies  of  the  western 
front  demanded  a  sudden  change,  a  trans¬ 
fer  of  some  of  the  divisions,  and  the  devel¬ 
oping  of  a  new  army.)  I  had  driven  over 
from  Jerusalem  in  the  early  morning  in  my 
Ford  car.  The  “C-in-C”  was  outwardly 
placid  and  even  playful;  for  a  child,  an 
American  child,  was  at  Headquarters,  hav¬ 
ing  just  arrived  by  train  that  morning  with 

[  22  ] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


her  mother,  from  Egypt,  on  her  way  to 
Jerusalem,  and  the  Commander-in-Chief 
was  for  the  hour  the  host.  One  could  not 
have  guessed  that  over  the  hills  to  the  north 
the  most  momentous  battle  of  all  the  Chris¬ 
tian  era  in  Palestine  was  being  waged  under 
his  direction  and  in  accordance  with  plans 
made  to  the  last  minutest  detail.  How  mo¬ 
mentous  it  was  I  did  not  then,  of  course, 
surmise.  And  when  the  General  a  few  min¬ 
utes  later  smilingly  announced,  as  he  came 
from  his  map-room,  that  his  cavalry  were 
at  “Armageddon,”  I  did  not  then  give  to 
the  announcement  the  interpretation  which 
came  to  me  later,  as  I  reread  the  chapter  in 
the  Book  of  Revelation,  describing  the  gath¬ 
ering  of  the  hosts  on  the  Plain  of  Megiddo, 
which  is  in  the  Hebrew  “Armageddon.”  I 
do  not  impute  to  the  General  this  interpre¬ 
tation;  but  I  think  that  what  was  happen¬ 
ing  that  morning  up  on  the  Plain  of  Me- 

[23] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


giddo,  as  it  is  sometimes  called,  or  Armaged¬ 
don,  or  Esdraelon,  was  as  fateful  for  the 
good  of  the  world  as  that  which  is  fore¬ 
told  with  such  striking  analogies  in  the 
Apocalypse. 

There  has  been  no  more  completely  suc¬ 
cessful  campaign  in  all  this  world  war,  I 
suppose.  An  English  military  observer  and 
critic  has  written  more  emphatically  and 
unreservedly:  “There  never  was  a  victory 
more  absolute  in  the  history  of  war.  .  .  . 
It  was  a  battle  without  a  morrow.”  And 
certainly  none  more  dramatic,  with  this 
wonderful  background  of  scenery  and  sa¬ 
cred  and  secular  history.  “What  a  plain 
it  is !”  says  Sir  George  Adam  Smith,  “upon 
which  not  only  the  greatest  empires,  races, 
and  faiths,  East  and  West,  have  contended 
with  each  other,  and  each  has  come  to  judg¬ 
ment.”  One  has  but  to  read  his  chapter  on 
Esdraelon  to  see  the  mighty  pageant  that 

[24] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


has  been  enacted  upon  this  plain  since  the 
days  of  Deborah  and  Barak. 

It  was  out  to  the  north  of  this  Plain  of 
Armageddon  (Megiddo,  or  Esdraelon)  that 
I  next  saw  the  Commander-in-Chief  a  few 
days  later.  He  had  sent  me  a  message  one 
morning  to  tell  me  that  if  I  would  wait,  that 
is,  postpone  my  return  to  America  a  few 
days  longer,  I  might  perhaps  find  it  possible 
to  walk  to  Dan  (for  I  had  already  walked 
from  Beersheba  up  to  the  old  front).  I 
acted  immediately  upon  this  intimation, 
starting  out  that  very  evening  and  walking 
all  night  to  Janin,  the  edge  of  the  plain,  then 
the  next  night  to  Nazareth,  then  on  to  the 
Sea  of  Galilee.  It  was  on  this  walking  jour¬ 
ney  that  I  saw  the  “Chiefs”  car  go  flying 
past  me,  he  and  his  general  so  engrossed  in 
the  panorama  that  they  did  not  see  the  pil¬ 
grim  at  the  roadside.  And  I  think  I  never 
saw  a  more  enticing  landscape  than  that 

[25] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


before  me  as  I  came  down  toward  the  Sea 
of  Galilee  that  late  afternoon.  I  was  ready 
to  say  with  the  rabbis:  “ Jehovah  hath  cre¬ 
ated  Seven  Seas,  but  the  Sea  of  Gennesaret 
[the  Sea  of  Galilee]  is  His  delight.”  I  recall 
only  one  scene  to  put  beside  it  in  my  own 
experience,  and  that  was  sunset  over  the 
Lake  of  Geneva  in  Switzerland.  It  has  the 
colorful  beauty  of  the  Yellowstone  without 
its  awesomeness.  And  I  have  General  Al- 
lenby  in  the  foreground  of  that  memorable 
Galilee  landscape. 

I  tried  to  imagine  what  General  Allenby’s 
satisfaction  must  be  in  recovering  for  Chris¬ 
tendom  this  crown  of  Palestine,  this  valley 
where  the  Great  Teacher  had  spent  most  of 
his  days  on  the  earth,  but  when  I  saw  him 
that  evening  in  Tiberias,  down  by  the  sea, 
with  his  staff  about  him  in  a  quiet  comrade¬ 
ship,  to  which  I  was  admitted  for  a  few  min¬ 
utes,  and  tried  to  express  to  him  my  con- 

[26] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


tinuing  congratulation  on  his  masterful 
achievement,  he  extended  his  hand  in  a  mo¬ 
tion  to  ward  off  what  I  was  saying,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  turn  it  toward  his  Chief  of 
Staff. 

I  had  a  few  days  before  sent  my  more 
formal  congratulations  by  a  special  des¬ 
patch-rider  to  Headquarters,  where  I  sup¬ 
posed,  however,  they  would  be  lost  among 
the  messages  from  all  the  world.  I  had  in¬ 
cluded  a  bit  of  verse  (to  a  melodious  well- 
known  tune)  which  I  had  written  some 
weeks  before  as  an  intimation  of  my  pre- 
victorian  prayer  and  my  feeling  as  an  Amer¬ 
ican.  I  told  him  that  its  publication  down 
in  Egypt  had  been  forbidden  by  the  censor 
(whether  for  literary  or  military  reasons  I 
could  not  be  certain) .  To  my  surprise  there 
came  in  acknowledgment  a  long  letter  in  his 
own  hand,  in  which  he  not  only  expressed 
his  appreciation  of  my  congratulations,  but 

[27] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


explained  the  probable  reason  for  the  sup¬ 
pression  of  the  lines.  By  the  change  of  one 
word  I  have  obviated  this  particular  mili¬ 
tary  objection: 

ALLENBY,  O  ALLENBY 
(To  the  tune  of  “ Maryland ,  My  Maryland ”) 

I 

(written  before  the  advance) 

O  Knight  of  all  the  Earth’s  acclaim, 

Allenby,  O  Allenby ! 

A  prophet  in  thy  very  name, 

Allenby,  0  Allenby ! 

Upon  the  “far-flung  battle-line” 

Thy  soldiers  fight  in  cause  divine. 

Deliverer  of  Palestine, 

Allenby,  O  Allenby. 

The  stars  that  fought  with  Deborah 
And  Barak  fight  to-day  with  thee 
Against  the  modern  Sisera 
Of  iron-cross  barbarity ! 

[28] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


Would  our  own  stars  might  fight  there  too, 
Shining  by  day  in  field  as  blue 
As  were  the  skies  that  Barak  knew, 
Allenby,  O  Allenby ! 

The  sound  of  marching  in  the  trees 
That  led  to  David’s  victory. 

Is  borne  again  by  every  breeze 
From  Ephraim  and  Galilee. 

It  bids  thee  forward  at  its  call 
Till  Moslem,  Hebrew,  Christian — all, 

Shall  be  released  from  Teuton-thrall — 
God  lead  thee  on,  O  Allenby ! 

II 

(written  after  the  advance) 

And  God  has  led  thee  on,  O  Knight, 
Allenby,  O  Allenby ! 

In  thy  great  battle  for  the  Right, 

Allenby,  O  Allenby ! 

The  Earth’s  free  nations  now  will  bring 
Their  genius  to  its  glorying 
And  they  who  sat  in  darkness  sing 
Fore’er  of  thee,  O  Allenby ! 

[29] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


It  was  my  great  honor  to  be  asked  to 
accompany  the  Commander-in-Chief,  with 
two  of  his  generals  and  his  aides,  as  he  went 
up  from  Tiberias  at  dawn  the  next  morning 
to  Damascus.  There  was  no  formal  entry, 
and,  as  I  suppose,  there  had  been  no  public 
announcement  of  his  coming.  He  drove 
through  the  clouds  of  obscuring  dust  to  the 
hotel  (fitly  named  Victoria),  where  he  was 
received  by  the  temporary  governor  of  Da¬ 
mascus,  Colonel  F.  A.  Lawrence,  the  young 
archaeologist,  an  Oxford  don,  who  had  for 
the  years  of  the  war  been  living  with  the 
forces  of  the  King  of  the  Hedjaz,  and  had 
been  their  Allied  leader.  The  Commander- 
in-Chief  was  then  called  upon  by  the  son  of 
the  King,  Feisal,  who  was  to  succeed  this 
young  archaeologist;  at  any  rate,  when  I 
reached  the  hotel  I  found  a  throng  of  the 
followers  of  the  prince  about  the  door,  wait¬ 
ing  the  return  of  their  leader  from  the  con- 

[30] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


ference,  and  an  hour  later  I  saw  them  in 
front  of  the  government  building,  where  the 
first  Arab  flag  was  flying. 

In  another  hour  the  pillar  of  cloud  was 
leading  us  across  the  dusty  plateau,  back 
to  the  Jordan,  where  I  was  permitted  to 
alight  from  the  automobile  and  continue  my 
Beersheba-to-Dan  journey  on  foot,  for  the 
way  was  now  clear  all  the  way  to  the  foot 
of  Mount  Hermon. 

So  I  am  able  to  say  that  I  remember  him, 
the  great  Deliverer  of  Palestine,  who  was 
for  the  time  being  also  my  commander-in¬ 
chief,  “from  the  land  of  the  Jordan  and  of 
the  Hermons,  from  the  hill  Mizar.” 

I  think  that  as  a  general  he  must  have  a 
forever  glorious  rank  in  the  world’s  war. 
“He  has  revealed  himself,”  to  quote  further 
the  English  military  critic,  “as  a  soldier  sec¬ 
ond  to  none  that  we  ourselves  [the  British] 
possess.  Not  only  so.  It  is  simple  truth 

[31] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


to  say  that  in  brilliancy  of  plan,  irresistible 
energy  of  execution,  comprehensiveness  and 
finality  of  success,  no  living  soldier  of  any 
nation  has  surpassed  this  Battle  of  Arma¬ 
geddon — to  give  it  what  happens  to  be 
geographically  its  real  name.  What  makes 
it  absorbing  to  every  student  of  war  is  that 
it  was  a  case  of  a  kind  which  hardly  comes 
off  half  a  dozen  times  in  as  many  centuries. 
It  was  an  idea  which  has  been  imagined  and 
aimed  at  a  thousand  times  for  once  that  it 
has  been  actually  done.  It  was  in  method 
and  effect  precisely  the  soldier’s  ‘battle  of 
dreams’  which  every  famous  leader  has 
longed  to  realize  some  day,  but  which  few 
indeed  have  ever  compassed  in  practice.” 

But  whatever  glowing  words  may  be 
spoken  of  him  as  a  general,  I  am  glad  to  be 
able  to  say  of  my  own  knowing,  as  I  saw 
him  out  in  the  Holy  Land,  that  he  deserves 
as  a  man  to  take  his  place  with  the  greatest 

[32] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


of  those  whose  deeds  are  recorded  in  the 
book  which  we,  together,  pored  over  on  that, 
for  jne,  memorable  night  out  in  the  Vale  of 
Ajalon. 

I  saw  him  once  more.  It  was  the  night 
of  my  starting  home  for  America.  I  stopped 
to  say  good-by  to  the  Commander-in-Chief. 
He  entered  the  very  door  through  which  I 
had  first  seen  him  come  on  our  Isaian  night 
— and  this  was  to  be  his  last  night  in  the  old 
Headquarters,  for  he  was  moving  northward 
in  the  morning.  He  asked  if  I  had  heard 
the  news:  One  of  their  airmen  flying  above 
Palestine  had  caught  the  German  wireless 
message  that  Germany  was  ready  to  accept 
the  terms  proposed  by  America.  Some  one 
of  the  little  company  said:  “It  is  the  end.” 
And  so  this  dramatic  episode  which  will 
make  an  epoch  for  all  the  East  came  to  its 
end.  And  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the 
Great  War  with  the  Beast,  I  shall  ever  be- 

[  33  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


lieve,  was  the  advance  of  Allenby’s  men  out 
upon  the  Vale  of  Armageddon. 

Note 

The  official  despatch  from  General  Al- 
lenby  to  the  British  War  Office,  describing 
the  last  campaign  in  Palestine  and  Syria, 
was  not  published  until  after  this  chapter 
was  written  and  in  the  hands  of  the  pub¬ 
lisher.  I  am,  therefore,  appending  a  sum¬ 
mary  of  the  despatch,  that  the  reader 
desiring  to  do  so  may  get  a  comprehensive 
view  of  this  campaign,  particularly  as  it 
relates  to  Palestine. 

I  quote  first  in  part  the  editorial  com¬ 
ment  in  the  London  Times  of  December  31, 
which  presents  his  despatch: 

We  have  to-day  General  Allenby’s  despatch  on 
the  decisive  battles  in  Palestine — a  plain  and  almost 
prosaic  tale  about  the  most  spectacular  operation 
of  the  whole  war.  Historians  will  dwell  on  it  with 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


admiration  and  delight.  Its  object  was  achieved 
with  artistic  completeness.  It  gave  almost  unique 
opportunities  to  the  cavalry  and  the  air  arm,  and 
both  took  advantage  of  them.  It  was  fought  over 
country  that  enshrined  the  most  sacred  memories 
and  traditions — whose  familiar  place  names  stir  the 
deepest  emotions  of  all  who  read  the  despatch.  .  .  . 
No  other  Allied  military  conception  during  the 
whole  war,  in  fact,  was  so  symmetrical  in  its  design, 
so  naturally  dramatic  in  its  setting,  so  perfectly 
fitted  in  its  execution  to  the  highest  hopes  of  its 
author.  Yet  General  Allenby  describes  it  as  though 
it  had  been  a  mere  matter  of  course — a  thoroughly 
British  trait,  and  with  which  no  one  will  be  overdis¬ 
posed  to  quarrel. 

•  •  •  •  •  •  •• 

This  ruin  of  the  Turk  in  Palestine — swift,  over¬ 
whelming,  wholly  complete — made  it  impossible 
for  Turkey  to  continue  the  war.  That  was  the  re¬ 
ward  of  the  autumn  campaign  fought  by  General 
Allenby,  his  men,  and  his  Allied  contingents — a 
campaign  that  was  a  model  of  perfection  in  the 
achievement  of  all  arms,  as  brilliant  in  execution 
as  in  design. 


[35] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


But  the  world  will  remember,  I  think  I 
may  add  to  these  words  of  consummate 
praise,  not  only  that  General  Allenby  put 
Turkey  out  of  the  war,  but  that  he  delivered 
Palestine. 

The  “ plain  and  almost  prosaic”  tale 
that  is  told  in  the  despatch  is  in  outline 
as  follows: 

With  the  exception  of  a  small  and  scattered  re¬ 
serve,  the  whole  of  the  Turkish  force  [the  Seventh 
and  Eighth  Armies]  west  of  the  Jordan,  was  enclosed 
in  a  rectangle  forty-five  miles  in  length  and  only 
twelve  miles  in  depth.  .  .  .  The  destruction  of  these 
armies,  which  appeared  to  be  within  the  bounds  of 
possibility,  would  leave  the  Fourth  Army  [east  of  the 
Jordan]  isolated,  if  it  continued  to  occupy  the  coun¬ 
try  south  and  west  of  Ammon.  ...  I  determined, 
therefore,  to  strike  the  blow  west  of  the  Jordan. 
.  .  .  I  decided  to  make  my  main  attack  in  the 
coastal  plain  rather  than  through  the  hills  north  of 
Jerusalem.  .  .  .  The  route  along  the  plain  would 
enable  the  cavalry  to  pass  through  the  hills  of  Sa- 

[36] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


maria  into  the  Plain  of  Esdraelon  at  the  narrowest 
point,  thus  insuring  greater  speed  and  less  likeli¬ 
hood  of  being  checked. 

By  reducing  the  strength  of  the  troops  in  the 
Jordan  Valley  to  a  minimum,  and  by  withdrawing 
my  reserves  from  the  hills  north  of  Jerusalem,  I 
was  able  to  concentrate  five  divisions  and  the  French 
detachment  for  the  attack  of  these  defences  [de¬ 
scribed  as  lying  in  the  narrow  plain,  which  is  some 
ten  miles  wide  at  Jilgulieh,  the  ancient  Gilgal].  .  .  . 
In  addition  to  the  infantry,  two  cavalry,  and  one 
Australian  mounted  division  were  available  for  this 
point. 

The  rains  .  .  .  usually  commence  at  the  end  of 
October,  rendering  the  plains  of  Sharon  and  Esdra¬ 
elon  impassable  for  transport,  except  along  the  few 
existing  roads.  Consequently,  operations  could  not 
be  postponed  beyond  the  middle  of  September. 

I  entrusted  the  attack  on  the  enemy’s  defences 
in  the  coastal  plain  to  Lieutenant-General  Sir  Ed¬ 
ward  Bulfin,  commanding  the  Twenty-first  Corps. 
.  .  .  I  ordered  him  to  break  through  the  enemy’s 
defences  between  the  railway  and  the  sea,  to  open 
a  way  for  the  cavalry,  and  at  the  same  time  to  seize 

[37] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


the  foot  hills  southeast  of  Jilgulieh.  The  Twenty- 
first  Corps  was  then  to  swing  to  the  right  .  .  .  and 
advance  in  a  northeasterly  direction  through  the 
hills,  converging  on  Samaria  and  Attaro,  so  as  to 
drive  the  enemy  up  the  Meessudic-Jenin  road  into 
the  arms  of  the  cavalry  at  El-Alfule. 

I  ordered  Lieutenant-General  Sir  Harry  Channel, 
commanding  the  Desert  Mounted  Corps,  also  the 
Australian  and  New  Zealand  Mounted  Division,  to 
advance  along  the  coast  directly  the  infantry  had 
broken  through  and  had  secured  the  crossings  over 
the  Nabr  Falik.  On  reaching  the  line  Jelameh- 
Hudeira,  he  was  to  turn  northeast,  cross  the  hills 
of  Samaria  and  enter  the  Plain  of  Esdraelon.  .  .  . 
Riding  along  the  plain,  the  Desert  Mounted  Corps 
was  to  seize  El-Alfule,  sending  a  detachment  to 
Nazareth,  the  site  of  the  Yilderim  General  Head¬ 
quarters.  Sufficient  troops  were  to  be  left  at  El- 
Alfule  to  intercept  the  Turkish  retreat  there.  The 
remainder  of  the  corps  was  to  ride  down  the  Valley 
of  Jezreel  and  seize  Beisan. 

I  ordered  Lieutenant-General  Philip  Chetwode  .  .  . 
commanding  the  Twentieth  Corps,  to  advance  his 
line  east  of  the  Bireh-Nablus  road,  on  the  night 

[38] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


preceding  the  main  attack  [the  night  on  which  Sir 
Philip  was  dining  with  me  and  excused  himself 
early  in  order  to  carry  forward  the  movement],  so 
as  to  place  the  Fifty-third  Division  in  a  more  favor¬ 
able  position  to  advance  and  block  the  exit  to  the 
lower  Jordan  Valley.  I  ordered  him  to  be  prepared 
to  carry  out  a  quicker  advance  with  the  Fifty -third 
and  the  Tenth  Divisions  on  the  evening  of  the  day 
on  which  the  attack  in  the  coastal  plain  took  place, 
or  later  as  circumstances  demanded. 

The  main  difficulties  lay  in  concealing  the  with¬ 
drawal  of  two  cavalry  divisions  from  the  Jordan 
Valley,  and  in  concentrating  secretly  a  large  force 
in  the  coastal  plain. 

To  prevent  the  decrease  in  the  Jordan  Valley 
being  discovered  by  the  enemy,  I  ordered  Major- 
General  Sir  Edmund  Chaytor  to  carry  out  ...  a 
series  of  demonstrations  with  the  object  of  inducing 
the  enemy  to  believe  that  an  attack  east  of  the  Jor¬ 
dan  was  intended,  either  in  the  direction  of  Madeba 
or  Ammon.  The  enemy  was  thought  to  be  antici¬ 
pating  an  attack  in  these  directions,  and  every  pos¬ 
sible  step  was  taken  to  strengthen  their  suspicions. 

At  this  time  a  mobile  column  of  the  Arabs,  being 

[39] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


accompanied  by  British  armored  cars  and  a  French 
mountain-battery,  was  assembling  .  .  .  fifty  miles 
east  of  Amman.  The  real  objective  of  this  column 
was  the  railway  north,  south,  and  west  of  Deraa. 

The  concentration  on  the  coastal  plain  was  carried 
out  by  night,  and  every  precaution  was  taken  to 
prevent  any  increased  movement  becoming  ap¬ 
parent  to  the  Turks.  Full  use  of  the  many  groves 
round  Ramleh,  Ludd,  and  Jaffa  was  made  to  con¬ 
ceal  troops  during  the  day.  The  chief  factor  in 
the  secrecy  maintained  must  be  attributed,  however, 
to  the  supremacy  in  the  air  which  had  been  obtained 
by  the  Royal  Air  Service. 

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  • 

The  operations  which  followed  fall  into 
five  phases: 

The  first  phase  was  of  short  duration.  In  thirty- 
six  hours  between  04.30  on  September  19  and  17.00 
[that  is,  5.00  p.  m.,]  on  September  20,  the  greater 
part  of  the  Eighth  Turkish  Army,  had  been  over¬ 
whelmed  and  the  troops  of  the  Seventh  Army  were 
in  full  retreat  through  the  hills  of  Samaria,  whose 
exits  were  already  in  the  hands  of  my  cavalry.  [It 

[40] 


GENERAL  ALLENBY 


was  on  the  morning  of  that  day  that  General  Allen- 
by  said  to  me :  “  I  have  just  had  word  that  my  cavalry 
are  at  Armageddon.”] 

In  the  second  phase,  the  fruits  of  this  success 
were  reaped.  The  infantry,  pressing  relentlessly  on 
the  heels  of  the  retreating  enemy,  drove  him  into 
the  arms  of  my  cavalry,  with  the  result  that  prac¬ 
tically  the  whole  of  the  Seventh  and  Eighth  Turkish 
Armies  were  captured  with  their  guns  and  trans¬ 
ports. 

This  phase  also  witnessed  the  capture  of  Haifa 
and  Acre,  and  the  occupation  of  Tiberias  and  of 
the  country  to  the  south  and  west  of  the  Sea  of  Gali¬ 
lee. 

As  the  result  of  the  rout  of  the  Seventh  and 
Eighth  Armies,  the  Fourth  Turkish  Army,  east  of 
the  Jordan,  retreated  and  Maan  was  evacuated. 

The  third  phase  commenced  with  the  pursuit  of 
this  army  by  Chaytor’s  force,  and  closed  with  the 
capture  of  Ammon  and  the  interception  of  the  re¬ 
treat  of  the  garrison  of  Maan,  which  surrendered. 

The  fourth  phase  witnessed  the  advance  by  the 
Desert  Mounted  Corps  to  Damascus,  the  capture 
of  the  remnants  of  the  Fourth  Army  and  the  ad- 

[41] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


vance  by  the  Twenty -first  Corps  along  the  coast 
from  Haifa  to  Beirut. 

In  the  fifth  phase,  my  troops  reached  Homs,  and 
Tripoli  without  opposition.  My  cavalry  then  ad¬ 
vanced  on  Aleppo  and  occupied  that  city  on  October 
26.  Aleppo  is  over  three  hundred  miles  from  our 
former  front  line.  The  Fifth  Cavalry  Division  cov¬ 
ered  five  hundred  miles  between  September  19  and 
October  26,  and  captured  over  11,000  prisoners  and 
52  guns.  During  this  period  the  Fifth  Cavalry  Di¬ 
vision  lost  only  21  per  cent  of  its  horses. 

Between  September  19  and  October  26,  75,000 
prisoners  have  been  captured.  Of  these,  200  officers 
and  3,500  other  ranks  are  Germans  or  Austrians. 

In  addition  360  guns  have  fallen  into  our  hands, 
and  the  transport  and  equipment  of  three  Turkish 
armies. 


[42] 


THE  PILGRIMAGE 


Iambic,  bearing  each  its  mystic  load. 


THE  CAMEL-TRAIN 


MY  thoughts  of  thee  would  be,  if 

writ  and  scanned. 

As  trains  of  camels  o’er  the  snow- 
white  sand 

Dawn-travelling  toward  the  Holy  Land 
With  slow  and  rhythmic  feet. 

Iambic,  bearing  each  its  mystic  load, 
Together  making  a  majestic  ode — 

I  but  the  blue-clad  driver  with  the  goad 
Upon  the  swaying  seat. 


IV 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES  IN  THE 
YEAR  OF  OUR  LORD  1918 

THIS  mount  seems  to  belong  to  the 
people  of  America  as  to  all  the  rest 
of  the  peoples  who  go  to  pray  on 
its  summit  and  slopes.  I  saw  it  in  my  boy¬ 
ish  imagination  rising  amidst  the  prairies  of 
Illinois.  I  have  seen  it  in  my  mature  years 
looking  sombrely  down  on  New  York  City 
or  standing  as  the  shadowy  Helderbergs  on 
the  horizon  of  Albany.  And  often  in  a 
summer’s  dusk  it  has  crept  with  its  solaces 
in  among  the  dearest  of  all  our  mountains 
—the  “White  Hills”  of  New  Hampshire. 
But  now  it  is  the  mount  not  of  my  imagina¬ 
tion  but  of  my  actual  physical  inhabiting 
from  which  I  write.  It  is  my  suburban 
home  where  I  spend  nights  after  the  busy 

[  46  ] 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


days  down  in  the  city.  My  feet  touch  the 
very  ground  on  which  He  walked.  My  eyes 
see  in  the  dusk  the  very  outlines  of  the 
hills  upon  which  He  looked. 

The  Patriarch  of  the  Greek  Church,  who 
at  Easter  comes  forth  with  new  fire  from 
the  tomb  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepul¬ 
chre,  to  set  aglow  the  candles  of  the  frenzied 
multitude,  is  a  prisoner  in  Damascus.  And 
so  it  is  that  I  have  been  permitted  by  those 
of  his  Order  to  occupy  his  summer  residence 
within  the  monastery  walls  on  the  summit 
of  the  Mount.  British  troops  with  horses 
are  encamped  just  outside  the  walls  on  one 
side,  and  refugees  from  the  hills  beyond 
Jordan  on  the  other,  but  within  are  only  a 
few  priests  for  fellow  tenants,  almost  as 
silent  as  the  shadows  of  the  trees  under 
which  they  stand  or  sit  in  their  pious  occu¬ 
pations. 

A  chapel  faces  the  court  with  an  encir- 

[47] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


cling  inner  wall  as  of  an  inner  sanctuary. 
This  wall  carries  inscriptions  in  Greek  from 
the  Bible,  its  entire  circumference  both  in¬ 
side  and  outside.  In  the  midst  of  the  court 
is  a  well  with  the  sacred  symbol  over  it. 
From  this  court  one  enters  the  Patriarch’s 
chambers.  I  feared  my  Scotch  ancestors 
within  me  might  make  protest  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  all  the  ritualistic  emblems,  and  es¬ 
pecially  against  my  occupancy  of  the  Patri¬ 
arch’s  cot;  but  they  were,  after  much  argu¬ 
ment,  reconciled  and  forgot  their  differences 
in  their  approach  to  this  hallowed  place 
(though  I  am  bound  to  say  that  the  de¬ 
nominational  partisanship  of  many  seems 
to  be  intensified  at  this  source  of  three  of 
the  world’s  great  religions). 

A  garden  with  olive-trees  and  vines  and 
cypresses  gives  wide  borders  to  the  monas¬ 
tery,  extending  from  one  side  of  the  summit 
to  the  other.  At  the  verge  away  from  Jeru- 

[48] 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


salem  one  looks  down  upon  the  Dead  Sea, 
three  thousand  feet  below  and  fifteen  miles 
away,  though  it  seems  so  near  in  some  lights 
that  one  could  throw  a  stone  into  it.  The 
white  stretches  of  the  Jordan  Valley  reach 
up  among  the  hills  and  give  weird  setting 
to  the  mountains  of  Moab  beyond — the 
mountains  from  one  of  whose  lonely  heights 
Moses  himself  looked  across  the  “Prom¬ 
ised  Land.” 

My  first  night  on  the  Mount  was  fortu¬ 
nately  the  night  of  the  full  moon — the  har¬ 
vest-moon;  at  any  rate  it  was  at  this  very 
time  of  year  that  Boaz  was  gathering  his 
harvest  in  the  field  near  Bethlehem  which  I 
had  visited  that  very  day  in  search  for  the 
children  of  a  dying  woman  who  was  lying 
in  the  hospital — children  whom  we  found 
in  the  last  little  hut  in  Bethlehem  down 
toward  the  field. 


[49] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


It  was  late  when  I  started  for  the  Mount 
from  my  place  down  in  the  city,  and  I  hur¬ 
ried  to  reach  the  summit  before  moonrise. 
So  it  was  that  I  took  the  shortest  course, 
which  led  me  through  the  Damascus  Gate 
and  through  the  gloom  of  the  Via  Dolorosa, 
a  dark,  rough,  and  sorrowful  street  by  day 
but  a  more  woeful  one  by  night.  There 
was  but  one  lamp  burning  its  entire  length. 
One  needs  torches  as  that  company  of  long 
ago  to  make  one’s  safe  way  and  to  identify 
the  stations  of  His  agony  along  the  dolorous 
way.  The  arches,  gates,  and  flying  but¬ 
tresses  which  give  character  to  the  street 
by  day  make  it  seem  a  way  of  sepulchres 
by  night,  and  the  few  stray  persons  I  met 
or  passed  as  wanderers  among  the  tombs. 
When  I  emerged  at  the  lower  gate,  called 
the  “Lady  Mary”  Gate,  I  was  actually 
among  the  graves  outside  the  wall,  but  the 
starlit  sky  stretched  wide  overhead  and  I 

[50] 


"\  ia  Dolorosa.  Mount  of  Olives  in  the  distance. 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


could  easily  distinguish  the  brow  of  Olivet 
before  me.  From  below  rose  a  sound  as  of 
falling  water,  as  if  the  Brook  Kedron,  dry 
at  this  season,  were  suddenly  in  flood. 
But  it  was  only  for  a  moment  that  I  could 
deceive  myself,  for  almost  immediately  I 
recognized  it  as  the  sound  of  innumerable 
hoofs  upon  the  hillside  road  that  runs  be¬ 
tween  the  city  walls  and  Gordon’s  Calvary. 
Were  they  the  hoofs  of  Solomon’s  spectre 
horses  whose  seemingly  empty  stables  I  had 
seen  a  few  days  before  beneath  the  Temple 
Area?  It  was  only  a  moment  later  that 
this  illusion  of  my  archaeological  evoking 
disappeared  and  that  I  saw  the  black  line 
of  living  horses  with  their  British  riders, 
who  might  have  been  thought  Crusader 
Knights  of  the  Middle  Ages,  except  for  the 
low-voiced  fragments  of  very  modern  songs 
into  which  one  or  another  of  the  riders 
broke  forth,  But  they  were  Crusaders  none 

[51] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


the  less  and  as  devoted  and  fearless  as  ever 
were  their  brothers  of  the  earlier  age. 

I  threw  myself  into  the  dark  stream  and 
was  swept  by  its  current  down  to  the  black 
depths  of  the  Vale  of  Jehosaphat,  where  its 
course  turned  off  to  the  right,  encircling 
the  Mount.  There  I  took  the  narrow  camel 
road  and  footpath  to  the  left,  leading  to 
paths  that  became  white  farther  up  the 
slope.  But  before  beginning  the  ascent,  I 
paused  for  a  little  between  the  walls  of  the 
Gethsemane  Gardens  to  see  the  shadowy 
procession  pass  on — on  out  of  this  valley 
into  the  44  valley  of  decision,”  like  the 
stream  which  Joel  saw  issuing  from  the 
Holy  City  to  water  the  valley  of  his  dreams 
over  toward  Moab.  As  I  saw  face  after 
face  silhouetted  against  the  sky  as  full  of 
stars  as  ever  I  have  seen  a  sky,  I  wondered 
how  many  would  come  singing  back  along 
that  same  road  from  Bethany  around  Oli- 

[52] 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


vet,  and  how  many  would  find  their 
Calvary  down  in  that  valley,  in  the 
cause  for  which  they  were  riding  into  the 
night. 

I  was  an  ashamed  spectator  standing 
there  at  the  Gethsemane  Gate,  feeling  that 
we  had  been  sleeping  when  we  should  have 
been  watching,  when  we  should  have  been 
preparing  for  defense  against  the  German 
Judas  who  had  professed  devotion  to  the 
teachings  of  Him  who  spoke  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount.  Did  not  the  great  German 
Hospice  stand  most  conspicuously  on  the 
Mount  that  its  pilgrims  might  dip  their 
bread  in  the  very  sop  of  the  Master’s  dish  ? 
And  do  not  the  towers  of  the  German 
churches  stand  out  most  prominently  (and 
offensively)  in  the  Inner  City?  One  can 
but  think  of  those  of  Christ’s  time  who 
stood  upon  the  street  corners  and  prayed 
that  they  might  be  seen  of  men,  as  one  sees 

[53] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


these  Pharisaical  towers.  And  the  blas¬ 
phemous  paintings  on  the  ceiling  of  the 
“Stiftung”  fill  one  with  the  righteous 
prayer  that  some  day  this  building  may  be 
used  to  metal  the  road  over  which  the  am¬ 
bulances  and  lorries  creep  along  to  and  from 
the  front. 

The  passion  of  Peter  rose  in  me  as  I  stood 
there.  A  mounted  officer  came  back  from 
the  column  and  peered  with  suspicious  eyes 
at  me  till  assured  by  my  Red  Cross  uni¬ 
form  of  my  sympathy,  he  joined  his  com¬ 
mand  and  rode  on.  If  only  he  could  have 
known  of  my  desire  to  change  places  with 
him  or  even  with  one  of  his  men,  and  have 
part  in  freeing  the  Holy  Land  from  the  tyr¬ 
annies  of  both  Teuton  and  Turk,  he  would 
not  have  taunted  me  by  his  look  as  one 
who  stood  by  the  fire  and  warmed  himself 
as  a  neutral  when  that  to  which  he  had 


[54] 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


made  loud  professions  of  loyalty  was  in 
peril. 

America !  You  must  send  not  only  the 
Red  Cross  to  this  front.  You  must  send 
that  which  Christ  said  he  came  to  bring — a 
sword.  Gloriously  as  you  are  fighting  at 
the  other  end  of  the  line,  you  should  make 
common  cause  with  the  forces  of  justice 
against  the  demons  of  cruelty  here — you 
must  have  a  part  in  the  redemption  of  the 
Holy  Land. 

I  took  the  narrow  way  between  the  high 
walls  of  the  several  Gethsemane  Gardens, 
each  of  which  wished  to  keep  exclusively 
the  memory  of  his  sacred  presence,  but 
wishing  myself  that  all  these  walls  were 
razed  and  that  all,  Armenians,  Greeks,  and 
Latins  alike,  would  merge  their  gardens 
into  one  garden  that  would  beautify  the 

[55] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


whole  hillside,  instead  of  fencing  each  their 
little  tract  and  leaving  the  greater  part  of 
the  hillside  as  bare  and  broken  and  desolate 
as  a  bit  of  “No  Man’s  Land.”  Perhaps  it 
was  because  of  this,  because  no  one  claimed 
as  his  particular  garden  that  rough,  stony, 
barren,  unoccupied  bit  of  solitude  near  the 
city  that  as  I  climbed  by  one  of  the  white 
tortuous  paths  up  from  the  Kedron,  I 
found  the  Christ  more  consciously  there 
than  inside  the  formal  gardens  with  their 
walled  and  ritual  beauty.  Moreover,  I 
agree  with  those  who  hold  that  our  Lord 
must  have  gone  higher  up  the  hill,  a  little 
farther  apart,  a  little  more  remote  from  the 
noise  of  the  city  and  of  the  highway,  for  his 
meditations. 

When  I  reached  the  summit  of  the 
Mount,  not  far  from  the  traditional  place 
of  His  ascension,  the  full  moon  was  just 
rising  over  the  ever-mystical  mountains  of 

[56] 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


Moab.  They  seemed  to  hang  as  a  veil 
below  the  eyes  of  the  sky  (after  the  mode 
of  some  of  the  Orient  women),  with  the 
sheen  upon  the  Dead  Sea  showing  as  a  bit 
of  broidery  below  the  veil  and  above  the 
shoulders  of  the  hills  of  Judah.  One  could 
hear  the  trumpeting  of  the  guns  that  had 
made  the  modern  and  wall-less  Jericho  to 
fall,  and  that  were  now  advancing  toward 
other  cities  which  under  other  names  than 
those  that  they  now  bear  met  like  fate  at 
the  hands  of  the  ancient  “Desert  Corps,” 
who  had  spent  forty  years  wandering  in  the 
wilderness  between  the  Jordan  and  the 
Nile.  But  except  for  this  occasional  sound 
of  distant  thunder  and  a  flashing  as  of  heat- 
lightning  in  the  cloudless  sky,  the  valley 
had  hidden  behind  its  hills  all  signs  of  war, 
and  seemed  to  have  upon  it  the  peace  of 
near-by  Bethany,  just  under  the  Mount, 
which  He  often  sought. 

[57] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


But  the  other  verge  of  the  Mount  soon 
called  me  away  from  the  moon’s  tempta¬ 
tion  of  the  wilderness  to  look  upon  the  Holy 
City,  which  the  same  light  had  converged 
into  a  white,  silent  dream  of  the  hot,  dusty, 
huddled,  and  not  too  clean  city  that  I  had 
left  an  hour  or  two  before.  The  shadows 
of  the  Mount  were  still  upon  Gethsemane 
and  Kedron,  but  the  city  was  sitting  like 
an  angel  in  white  beside  a  tomb — an  empty 
tomb. 

It  was  the  morning,  however — the  morn¬ 
ing  after  a  night  on  the  Mount,  with  no 
sound  but  of  the  wind  unceasingly  sorrow¬ 
ing — that  gave,  by  the  miracle  of  its  first 
light,  a  vision  of  the  city  such  as  one  might 
have  to  wait  years  to  catch  again.  I  had 
waked  (literally  at  the  crowing  of  the  cock) 
at  dawn,  had  seen  the  sun  come  up  over 
Moab,  whose  dim  ridge  was  now  sur¬ 
mounted  by  a  great  plain  of  golden  cloud 

[58] 


Jerusalem  as  seen  from  the  Mount  of  Olives. 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


or  desert  beyond,  and  then  had  hastened 
to  see  the  city  lying  in  the  new  light.  I 
was  disappointed,  for  a  mist  was  sweeping 
up  from  the  valley,  completely  blotting  out 
both  the  dusty  city  of  the  day  before  and 
the  white  city  of  the  night  before  (the  only 
reconciling  circumstance  of  the  moment 
being  that  the  outwardly  abhorrent  and 
inwardly  blasphemous  German  building  on 
the  neighboring  summit  of  the  Mount  was 
also  obliterated.  This  building,  in  which 
the  ex-Kaiser  is  represented  in  the  ceiling 
of  the  chapel  in  a  companion  panel  with 
Deity,  in  which  the  Psalmist  is  painted 
with  the  moustache  of  a  German  general, 
and  in  which  the  ex-Kaiser  is  moulded  in  a 
figure  of  bronze  as  a  Crusader.  The  city 
had  disappeared  as  if  the  statement  of  the 
Master  as  to  its  rebuilding  were  to  be  liter¬ 
ally  tested.  Not  one  stone  stood  upon 
another.  Not  one  structure  of  man’s  build- 


[59] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


ing  remained.  Nothing  was  to  be  seen 
save  the  very  crest  of  the  hill  back  of  the 
city,  to  which  no  houses  had  ascended,  and 
it  seemed  suspended  in  mid-air,  after  the 
manner  of  the  rock  on  Mount  Moriah. 

But  even  as  I  looked  toward  the  place  of 
the  ancient  and  holy  city,  the  gray  curtain 
of  mist  or  fog  parted  as  if  drawn  aside  by 
invisible  hands.  A  golden  rift  immediately 
over  the  city — over  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre  itself — slowly  widened,  till  in  a 
few  minutes  there  stood  as  in  an  Apocalypse 
before  me,  a  city  shut  away  from  the  outer 
city,  and  from  all  about,  as  if  rebuilded  in 
the  golden  and  jewelled  image  of  itself,  or 
as  if  actually  let  down  from  heaven — a 
celestial  city  “having  the  glory  of  God” 
upon  it,  with  its  “great  high  wall”  and  its 
gates  open  to  the  nations  with  their  gifts  of 
“glory  and  honor.” 

I  had  asked  an  American  who  was  giving 

[60] 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


a  splendid  service  on  the  Palestine  front  to 
spend  the  night  with  me  on  the  Mount, 
but  he  had  not  come.  I  was  rather  glad  of 
it  when  I  saw  the  fog  in  the  valley  hiding 
everything,  but  I  now  regretted  that  he 
was  not  with  me  to  bear  witness  to  this 
miraculous  epiphany.  I  had  no  camera, 
and  no  camera  could  have  caught  the  full 
glory  of  it.  But  it  was  not  of  my  imagin¬ 
ing.  I  hurried  down  the  Mount,  however, 
without  looking  again  at  the  city,  wishing 
to  keep  the  vision  of  it  as  I  had  seen  it 
come  out  of  the  cloud. 

A  refugee  was  going  down  the  same  foot¬ 
path  toward  the  city  gate.  I  looked  into 
his  face  as  I  passed  to  see  if  the  light  of  the 
vision  I  had  beheld  was  upon  it,  but  the 
effulgence  of  my  Apocalypse  had  evidently 
faded  into  the  common  light  of  day,  or  his 
eyes  were  holden  that  he  could  not  see. 
This  sight  of  Jerusalem  given  to  me  in  such 

[61] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


dramatic  way  will  always  remain  as  an 
intimation  of  that  which  Americans,  in 
common  with  all  who  are  fighting  for  jus¬ 
tice  in  the  earth,  must  help  to  bring  into 
this  Holy  City.  Many  that  make  abomi¬ 
nation  and  lies  in  the  world  have  entered  in 
the  past,  but  under  the  British  Government 
it  is  being  cleansed,  and  prepared  for  the 
genius  of  the  nations,  and  especially  of 
those  whose  religions  found  cradle  here — 
Moslem,  Jewish,  and  Christian — to  adorn 
it,  make  it  the  most  beautiful  citv  on  the 
planet  and  give  it  most  fit  setting  amid 
the  mountains  round  about  it — “as  the 
stars  of  a  crown  glistening  upon  his 
land.” 

Here  is  a  prayer  that  comes  to  one’s  lips 
on  the  Mount  of  Olives,  and  that  may  be 
helpful  to  those  who  can  but  look  toward 
this  place  of  radiant  dawn  and  of  glorious 
twilight : 


[62] 


ON  THE  MOUNT  OF  OLIVES 


O  Thou  whose  feet  upon  the  mountains  of  Moab 
are  beautiful  with  the  golden  tidings  of  a  new  day, 
who  dost  walk  upon  the  sea  with  sandals  of  silver 
and  dost  hasten  across  the  desert  hills,  which  Thou 
makest  to  glow  as  jewels,  on  Thy  way  to  this  moun¬ 
tain  of  light  where  Thou  didst  often  meet  Thy  Son 
when  on  Earth.  Here  shall  I  come  each  day  though 
far  away,  on  sea  or  land,  to  meet  Thee  on  this  holy 
hill,  and  do  Thou  go  with  me  to  the  day’s  work  in 
whatever  city  it  lies,  near  or  far.  Help  me  to  do 
it,  whatever  and  wherever  it  be,  in  the  spirit  of 
Him  who  prayed  here. — Amen. 


[63] 


V 


AIN  KARIM 


(Meaning  the  “  fountain  of  mercy,”  at  the  traditional  birthplace 
of  John  the  Baptist,  where  Mary  came  to  visit  Elizabeth  after 
the  Annunciation.) 


O  SPRING  of  Mercy,  that  for  untold 

years 

Has  flowed  unceasing  from  these 
sacred  hills 

O’er  which  the  Virgin  hastened  as  she  went 
To  tell  her  secret  to  Elizabeth, 

Singing  her  wondrous  canticle  of  Him 
Who  “hath  put  down  the  mighty  from 
their  seat,” 

Who  “hath  exalted  them  of  low  degree” 
And  showeth  tender  mercy  unto  men. 


Here  did  she  come  with  balanced  jar. 

Here  bathe  her  face  and  feet  as  she  who 
stands 


[64] 


Woman  at  the  Spring  of  Ain  Karim,  reputed  home  of  Elizabeth. 


AIN  KARIM 


To-day  before  the  splashing,  sparkling 
stream 

Ere  lifting  to  her  head  the  living  gift. 

•  •••••*• 

Water  of  Life  was  He  who  came  of  her, 
The  heart’s  own  proof  of  that  same  lasting 
love 

Which  flows  from  sources  pure  and  infinite 
And  knows  nor  time  nor  circumstance — 
Only  man’s  thirst  for  the  immortal  thing, 
Eternal  life  with  everlasting  love. 

Divine  Ain  Karim,  I  would  drink  of  thee. 
And  so  have  life  and  love  eternally, 

E’en  though  my  body  lie  in  lonely  grave 
Deep  in  some  cypress-mourning  vale  of 
earth. 

As  they  of  British  mothers  born  who  died 
Regaining  hills  that  first  knew  Mary’s 
Son — 

But  life  with  love,  for  endless  life  alone 
Were  an  eternal  death,  or  deathless  hell. 


Jerusalem,  1918. 


[65] 


VI 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 

SO  great  are  the  distances  between  two 
oceans  in  the  United  States  that  Pal¬ 
estine  when  seen  by  Americans  will 
seem  pitiably  small — insignificant  in  area 
and  natural  product.  From  the  top  of  a 
hill  outside  Jerusalem  one  can  see  both  the 
Mediterranean  Sea  and  the  Dead  Sea.  For 
Palestine  is  not  as  wide  as  the  State  of  New 
Hampshire,  which  I  have  crossed  on  foot  in 
a  day.  It  was  the  memory  of  this  walk 
across  New  Hampshire  that  perhaps  sug¬ 
gested  traversing  Palestine  in  the  same 
way.  Or  was  it,  after  all,  the  impulse 
which  has  driven  hundreds  of  thousands, 
and  even  millions,  over  the  same  road  in 
the  two  thousand  years  of  the  Christian 
era,  that  made  me  wish  to  travel  the  whole 

[66] 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


sacred  way  on  my  feet?  At  any  rate,  the 
longing  of  the  first  weeks,  encouraged  by 
memories  of  White  Mountain  walks  of  sixty 
and  seventy  miles,  has  had  its  satisfaction 
in  accomplishment,  and  now  has  its  memo¬ 
ries  as  I  look  out  from  the  Mount  of  Olives 
across  the  westward  mountains  through 
which  I  made  my  pilgrimage  from  the  sea 
that  lies  toward  America,  and  across  the 
eastward  wilderness  through  which  I 
reached  the  other  edge  of  the  Holy  Land. 

This  pilgrimage  (for  “pilgrimage”  it  was, 
and  no  ordinary  walk)  had  a  fit  and  glorious 
preparatory  night  out  near  Jaffa,  one  of 
those  perfect  Holy  Land  nights  when  the 
stars  come  nearer  earth — such  a  night  as 
that  in  which  David  must  have  walked 
when  he  came  from  playing  to  the  mad 
spirit  of  Saul,  when  “the  stars  of  night  beat 
with  emotion.”  I  slept  in  a  tent  on  the 
very  edge  of  the  cliff  overlooking  the  sea 

[67] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


(as  close  to  it  as  one  could  lie  without  dan¬ 
ger  of  falling  into  the  sea).  The  sound  of 
the  waves  was  as  that  of  the  wind  in  the 
trees  of  the  Mount  of  Olives,  which  is  sel¬ 
dom  quiet. 

And  the  “ pilgrimage”  had  also  a  fit  and 
glorious  morning.  The  sun  was  received 
as  he  came  resplendent  and  burning  from 
the  very  moment  of  his  appearance  on  the 
farthest  Judaean  mountain,  by  the  sound  of 
bagpipes  (for  I  was  with  the  famous  4  4  Black 
Watch”  on  this  the  fourth  anniversary  of 
the  beginning  of  the  war).  And  the  tim¬ 
brels  of  Miriam  or  the  sackbut  and  psaltery 
of  David  could  not  have  made  more  stir¬ 
ring  noise  unto  the  Lord  of  the  Day.  But 
it  was  only  the  preface  to  a  service  more 
memorable  and  impressive  to  me  than  even 
that  which  I  attended  in  Edinburgh  at  St. 
Giles’s  the  Sunday  after  the  beginning  of 
the  wrar,  when  I  sat  beneath  St.  Gaudens’s 

[68] 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


“Stevenson,”  saw  the  city  councillors  in 
their  scarlet  going  in  procession  with  the 
clergy,  and  heard  the  solemn  and  moving 
prayers  for  the  men  who  were  going  out  to 
Flanders.  And  here  they  were  still  fight¬ 
ing  on  a  line  stretching  all  the  way  to  the 
edge  of  the  Desert  of  Arabia  and  the  Valley 
of  the  Euphrates — to  the  very  cradle  of  the 
race.  The  Highlanders  stood  in  a  hollow 
square  opening  toward  Jerusalem,  with  the 
sea  close  at  their  backs.  They  sang  the 
ancient  hymns  of  the  church  (among  them 
“O  God,  Our  Help  in  Ages  Past”),  bowed 
to  the  prayer  of  the  “padre”  (as  every 
chaplain  is  called),  and  listened  with  real 
interest,  and  not  simply  from  Scotch  habit, 
to  his  stirring  but  calm  and  simple  sermon. 
The  colonel  had  said  that  the  “padre”  was 
a  “topper,”  and  that  he  would  “give  me  a 

-  good  sermon.”  And  the  padre  rose 

to  his  reputation.  He  read  for  the  Old  Tes- 

[69] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


tament  lesson  the  sixth  chapter  of  the  Sec¬ 
ond  Book  of  the  Kings,  which  tells  the 
story  of  Elisha  and  his  servant  who  found 
themselves  surrounded  by  an  army  out  on 
the  plain  of  Dothan,  not  fifty  miles  away; 
and  for  the  New  Testament  lesson  the  de¬ 
scription  by  St.  Paul  of  the  Christian  sol¬ 
dier.  He  took  for  his  text  the  verse  from 
the  Old  Testament  lesson  (the  words  of  the 
prophet  to  his  panic-stricken  servant  whose 
eyes  were  suddenly  opened  to  see  the 
“horses  and  the  chariots  of  fire  round  about 
Elisha”),  “Fear  not;  for  they  that  be  with 
us  are  more  than  they  that  be  with  them.” 
His  sermon  was  punctuated  by  reports  from 
the  guns  not  far  away,  but  it  had  a  star¬ 
tling  climax  when,  just  as  he  was  coming 
to  its  close,  an  aeroplane  flying  overhead 
toward  the  enemy’s  lines,  appeared  as  a 
“chariot  of  fire”  in  the  morning  sun.  The 
young  Scotch  minister,  standing  before 

[70] 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


these  men  facing  the  fifth  year  of  the  war, 
was  as  the  ancient  prophet  who,  not  fifty 
miles  (but  more  than  twenty-five  centuries) 
away,  beyond  Shechem,  on  which  the  army 
was  now  advancing,  made  visible  the  celes¬ 
tial  army;  for  he  too  made  every  man  feel 
that  the  invisible  forces  of  right  were  fight¬ 
ing  with  them — a  faith  that  was  strength¬ 
ened  by  the  message  which  came  from  the 
Commander-in-Chief  that  morning  express¬ 
ing  his  “hope  and  confidence  based  on  the 
justice  of  our  cause  and  faith  in  the  sustain¬ 
ing  help  of  the  Almighty.” 

The  pilgrimage  upon  which  I  set  out  later 
in  the  day  had  been  made  by  thousands, 
but  at  a  pace  suggested  by  the  etymological 
derivation  which  Thoreau  in  an  essay  on 
walking  has  given  to  the  word  “saunterer” 
— one  who  goes  “a  la  Sainte  Terre,”  a 
“sainte-terrer,”  a  “saunterer.”  My  pil¬ 
grimage  was  no  sauntering,  as  will  be  in- 

ITU 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


f erred  from  the  fact  that  I  made  the  jour¬ 
ney  from  Jaffa  to  Jericho,  walking  every 
step  of  the  way,  a  distance  of  somewhat 
more  than  sixty  miles  as  I  walked,  in 
twenty-two  hours,  elapsed  time,  or  in  be¬ 
tween  eighteen  and  nineteen  hours  in  actual 
walking  time.  I  have  no  doubt  that  Peter, 
hastening  in  the  opposite  direction  toward 
the  house  of  Tabitha  or  Dorcas,  walked  as 
fast,  unless  indeed  he  rode  on  a  donkey.  (I 
actually  met  an  American  Red  Cross  doc¬ 
tor  going  like  Peter  from  Ludd  to  minister 
to  some  one  in  Joppa,  but  in  a  Ford  car). 
Many  a  Middle  Age  Crusader  doubtless 
travelled  over  some  portions  of  the  road  in 
double-quick  time,  advancing  or  retreating. 
And  no  doubt  many  a  traveller  on  the  road 
to  Jericho  hurried  over  other  portions  of 
the  way  to  escape  the  fate  of  the  nameless 
one  who  has  made  the  “good  Samaritan” 
immortal.  But  I  think  that  neither  dis- 

[72] 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


ciple,  Crusader,  pilgrim,  nor  sightseer  (the 
last  category  being  now  no  longer  on  the 
roads)  usually  went  at  this  pace,  or  at  any 
rate  the  whole  way.  Certainly  the  gait  of 
pedestrians  of  to-day  is  more  leisurely.  I 
passed  scores,  and  indeed  hundreds,  on  the 
road,  soldiers,  fellaheen,  Egyptian  laborers. 
But  I  was  alone  till  the  darkness  came  on, 
when  I  became  conscious  not  only  of  the 
moving  presence  of  spirit  pilgrims  out  of 
the  past — of  ancient  warriors  from  Joshua’s 
time,  for  Ajalon  and  Beth-horon  were 
among  the  foot-hills,  and  of  Crusaders,  for 
the  great  tower  of  Ramleh  stood  for  a  time 
in  majesty  against  the  afterglow  in  the 
western  sky,  but  also  the  living  pilgrims  of 
the  night.  Pushing  along  in  the  darkness, 
dimly  luminous  with  the  stars  (and  no¬ 
where  have  I  seen  more  beautiful  nights 
than  in  Palestine),  I  would  suddenly  be¬ 
come  aware  that  a  procession  of  some  sort 

[73] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


] 


was  passing  in  the  muffling  dust  of  the  earth 
road  on  one  side  or  the  other  of  the  white 
metalled  road  in  which  I  was  walking. 
Bending  low  to  get  the  forms  against  the 
sky,  I  would  discover  now  that  it  was  a 
train  of  camels  with  their  mysterious  bur¬ 
dens,  or  perhaps  a  pattering  procession  of 
pack-donkeys.  Again  it  would  be  a  body 
of  Egyptians  of  the  great  “  Egyptian  Labor 
Corps,”  which  is  giving  such  valuable  ser¬ 
vice  in  building  and  maintaining  the  roads 
and  other  public  works,  going  from  one 
camp  to  another.  Then  the  creaking  of 
heavy  wheels,  or  the  clanking  of  harness, 
or  the  tramping  of  shod  feet,  or  the  quiet 
singing  by  a  “Tommy,”  would  tell  of  an¬ 
other  sort  of  procession  to  or  from  the  front 
line,  the  flashes  of  whose  guns  were  almost 
continuously  illuminating  the  northern  sky 
like  heat-lightning.  At  one  time  I  came 
upon  many  East  Indian  soldiers,  in  twos 

[74] 


FROM  Jx\FFA  TO  JERICHO 


and  in  small  groups,  walking  in  the  same 
direction  with  me  in  the  metalled  road.  A 
little  later  I  overtook  large  groups  of  these 
picturesque  figures — who  seem  detached 
and  mystical  even  by  day,  but  as  inscru¬ 
table  as  men  from  Mars  in  the  darkness, 
which  was  not  deep  enough  to  obscure  their 
differences  from  the  man  of  the  Occident. 
I  found  as  I  walked  on,  passing  one  sedate 
and  silent  group  after  another,  that  they 
were  but  the  tired  stragglers”  from  the 
column  ahead.  It  took  well  on  to  an  hour 
to  reach  the  vanguard  of  this  column  so 
long  was  it — and  so  tired  was  it  when  I 
came  to  the  very  head  of  it  that  the  men 
were  lying  down  in  their  tracks  in  the  white 
road,  and  evidently  with  as  much  comfort 
as  if  lying  between  white  sheets  on  mat¬ 
tresses.  I  was  not  yet  sleepy  or  tired  my¬ 
self,  though  I  learned  that  they  had  started 
at  the  same  hour  as  I  and  several  miles  this 

[75] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


side  of  Jaffa.  (A  few  hours  later  I  was 
finding  the  rough  stone  coping  at  the  side 
of  a  bridge  a  very  welcome  and  as  comfort¬ 
able  a  bed  for  a  few  minutes  as  they  the 
roadbed  itself,  with  its  coverlet  of  dust.) 
I  found  the  commanding  officer,  a  fellow 
colonel,  who  offered  me  the  courtesy  which 
is  universally  characteristic  of  the  English 
officer.  (In  all  my  travels,  on  foot,  by 
train,  or  by  car,  I  have  known  but  one 
exception.)  I  then  had  a  clear  road  alone 
for  the  rest  of  the  night,  except  for  the  fel¬ 
laheen  with  their  camels  or  donkeys.  Or 
almost  alone,  for  shortly  after  passing  the 
Indian  column  and  saying  good-night  to 
their  English  officers,  I  became  conscious 
that  some  one  was  following  me  at  a  good 
pace  on  foot.  I  did  not  wish  a  companion, 
and  so  I  quickened  my  gait,  only  to  find 
that  he  was  still  close  upon  me.  Faster 
and  faster  I  went  till  I  reached  the  camp 

[76] 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


at  Latron,  where  I  stopped  for  water.  I 
was  led  back  some  distance  from  the  road 
by  the  hospitable  guard  to  a  spring,  as  I 
supposed,  but,  as  I  found  instead,  the 
“fantasia,”  the  universal  fountains,  the 
great  rectangular  cans  such  as  the  camels 
carry  by  thousands.  (I  estimated  that  if 
the  “fantasia”  that  I  saw  on  another  jour¬ 
ney,  borne  by  one  camel-train,  were  put 
end  to  end  they  would  make  a  pipe-line 
or  aqueduct  nearly  a  mile  long.)  But  while 
I  quenched  my  thirst  the  mysterious  fig¬ 
ure,  in  costume  that  appeared  to  be  white 
or  very  light,  disappeared.  I  afterward 
learned  that  the  place  where  I  stopped  was 
the  traditional  birthplace  of  the  “good 
thief,”  canonized  as  St.  Dismas.  Indeed  a 
church  stands  somewhere  in  the  deeper 
shadows  of  the  hill  just  back  of  the  camp. 
I  suspect  that  my  fellow  traveller  and  fol¬ 
lower  was  only  the  shade  of  Dismas  walk- 

[  77  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


in g  in  penance  the  path  of  his  prepenitent 
nights,  and  that  he  turned  in  to  his  shrine 
for  the  rest  of  the  night.  At  any  rate,  I 
continued  alone  my  journey  across  the 
Valley  of  Sharon,  its  night-air  pungent 
with  an  aromatic  fragrance.  But  if  there 
were  roses  growing  in  Sharon  they  were 
gray  roses,  for  the  dust  was  deep  upon 
everything. 

As  I  neared  the  foot-hills  I  followed  the 
example  of  the  Indian  soldiers,  choosing, 
however,  as  I  have  said,  the  coping  of  a 
stone  bridge  for  my  mattress  and  pillow. 
I  would  better  have  laid  myself  down  on 
the  road,  for  when  I  was  wakened  a  few 
minutes  later  by  a  camel-bell  I  found  that 
the  cover  of  my  canteen  had  fallen  off  into 
the  wady  (brook)  below,  and  that  all  the 
water  had  followed  it  into  the  dry  bed  of 
the  brook.  The  thought  of  four  or  five 
hours  ahead  without  water  only  increased 

[78] 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


my  thirst  and  made  me  sympathize  with 
the  genii  of  the  wady,  who  receive  not  a 
drop  from  the  skies  or  hills  for  months. 
But  they  must  have  been  grateful  for  the 
drafts  from  my  canteen,  and  have  found  a 
way  to  show  their  gratitude,  for  a  little 
way  up  the  pass  through  the  lower  hills, 
when  I  was  about  famished  for  a  drink  of 
water,  I  overtook  an  Arab  boy  with  two 
donkeys  (on  one  of  which  he  was  mounted) 
and  two  camels.  By  signs  I  made  known 
my  thirst,  whereupon  he  dismounted  and 
led  me  to  a  place  at  the  roadside  from 
which  he  dipped  cupful  after  cupful  of  as 
delicious  water  as  I  ever  tasted.  (I  found 
on  a  later  journey  that  this  was  a  stone 
basin,  or  cistern,  which  is  daily  filled  from 
a  spring  near  by.)  I  wish  that  I  had  asked 
the  boy  his  name  that  I  might  have  thanked 
him  more  adequately  and  tangibly.  How¬ 
ever,  he  will  have  from  a  higher  source  the 

[79] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


reward  promised  to  those  who  give  a  cup 
of  cold  water  in  the  name  of  Christ.  He 
was  certainly  a  Christ-soul  boy.  He  was 
insistent  that  I  should  mount  either  one  of 
his  donkeys  or  camels  (making  a  fork  with 
his  fingers  to  suggest  the  straddle).  I  de¬ 
clined  as  kindly  and  gratefully  as  I  could, 
with  no  such  effective  symbolism  available, 
and  passed  on.  A  half-hour  away  I  could 
hear  this  Arab  youth  below  me  singing  his 
happy  but  plaintive  song  as  I  was  mount¬ 
ing  through  the  olive-groves  (where  it  is 
said  David  once  lived  when  fleeing  from 
Saul)  to  the  heights  of  Enab,  that  was  once 
known  as  Kirjath-jearim,  where  for  twenty- 
five  years  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  rested 
in  the  house  of  Abinadab. 

I  missed  the  main  road  at  the  top  of  the 
hill  and  found  myself  on  a  rocky  path  down 
into  the  valley  on  the  other  side.  If  the 
ark  was  taken  down  this  path,  I  can  under¬ 
go] 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


stand  why  the  oxen  stumbled,  and  why 
Uzzah  put  out  his  hand  to  stay  the  ark — 
an  act  for  which  one  feels  with  David  that 
Uzzah  should  not  have  been  smitten. 
There  is  a  threshing-floor  not  far  beyond, 
the  first  that  I  had  seen  in  Palestine  on 
my  first  journey  into  Jerusalem,  and  I  have 
wondered  whether  the  primitive  threshing 
with  the  unmuzzled  ox  had  gone  on  season 
after  season  on  that  same  floor  since  the 
time  of  Joshua  and  David.  Perhaps  it  was 
the  very  threshing-floor  of  Nachor  near 
which  the  oxen  stumbled.  At  any  rate,  it 
must  have  been  through  this  very  valley 
that  the  ark  was  borne  toward  Jerusalem, 
with  the  playing  on  instruments  of  fir-wood, 
with  timbrels  and  castanets  and  cymbals. 
Somewhere  beyond,  it  was  left  (because  of 
the  untoward  incident  that  angered  David) 
in  the  house  of  Obed-Edom,  where  the 
three  months’  blessing  fell  upon  all  his 

[81] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


household,  while  all  the  house  of  Abinadab 
mourned  the  loss  of  Uzzah. 

It  was  to  be  a  valley  of  expectation  and 
disappointment  when  I  first  passed  through 
it  by  day,  for  I  expected  to  see  the  Holy 
City  gleaming  below  when  I  reached  the 
height  at  the  farther  side  of  it,  but  I  was 
disappointed  to  find,  when  I  reached  the 
summit,  that  there  was  still  another  range 
of  hills  that  kept  the  City  another  hour  or 
two  from  my  view — a  real  disappointment, 
though  my  pilgrimage  had  taken  more 
years  than  the  Children  of  Israel  wandered 
in  the  wilderness — that  is  all  the  years  of 
my  life — the  wilderness  of  which  I  was 
having  the  first  glimpse  in  seeing  the  faint 
mountains  of  haze  toward  the  east. 

But  the  next  intervening  valley,  whose 
farther  wall  makes  one  of  the  “mountains 
round  about  Jerusalem,”  is  so  beautiful  as 

[82] 


Road  to  Jericho.  Mountains  of  Moab  in  the  distance 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


to  help  one  forget  the  disappointment  of 
the  Kastel  hill.  .  In  this  valley  it  was  that 
Mary  came  to  visit  Elizabeth  near  the 
fountain  (pictured  on  page  64)  that  has 
drawn  about  it  the  most  beautiful  village  in 
southern  Palestine,  and  kept  it  high  on  the 
hillside  from  slipping  down  into  the  val¬ 
ley’s  depths.  It  was  here  that  the  boy, 
John  the  Baptist,  was  hidden  to  escape  the 
threat  of  Herod.  It  was,  perhaps,  through 
this  valley  that  Christ  walked  to  Emmaus. 
And  by  night,  though  one  could  not  see 
the  beauty  of  the  vale,  one  could  the  more 
easily  evoke  the  past  that  had  lived  and 
loved  and  laid  itself  down  to  die  in  its  dust, 
or  had  risen  to  immortality,  and  some  of 
that  past  but  recently  become  dust;  for  at 
the  foot  of  the  last  hill  there  are  six  graves 
of  English  soldiers  who  were  killed  there 
the  day  before  the  entrance  of  the  first 

[83] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


brigade  of  British  troops  into  Jerusalem.  I 
went  back  later  and  wrote  this  epitaph  for 
the  six  graves: 

THEY  DIED  CLIMBING 

“  Beyond  the  hill  the  Holy  City  lies; 

These  never  saw  its  glories  with  their  eyes, 

They  never  reached  its  crest; 

They  perished  climbing  these  last  sacred  heights. 

But  when  they  died,  like  true  Crusader  knights 
Their  feet  were  on  the  Quest.” 

But  as  I  began  to  climb  from  this  last 
hill,  the  gibbous  moon  was  making  a  gray, 
silvery  light  in  the  eastern  sky.  It  was, 
however,  as  was  St.  John  of  the  true  Light, 
but  the  4 'prodrome”  of  the  greater  light 
that  was  just  rising  beyond  the  Mount  of 
Olives  as  I  entered  the  Holy  City. 

It  was  not  the  side  from  which  one  would 
choose  to  enter,  for  one  does  not  see  the 
City  till  one  is  actually  in  it,  and  then  one 
cannot  see  its  beauty  or  feel  its  antiquity 

[84] 


on  the  Jaffa- Jerusalem  Road. 


'  fr. 


( 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


because  of  the  modem  shabby  houses  that 
line  the  Jaffa  Road.  It  was  the  side,  how¬ 
ever,  from  which  its  recent  conquest  had 
been  made,  and  it  was  by  the  Jaffa  Road 
that  General  Allenby  and  his  men  entered 
the  Inner  City — where  the  Kaiser  had  cut 
in  the  ancient  walls,  beside  the  old  Jaffa 
Gate,  a  few  feet  away,  for  his  august  and 
farcical  entry,  several  years  ago,  in  the 
garb  of  a  Crusader.  There  could  be  no 
more  marked  or  significant  contrast  than 
that  which  General  Allenby’ s  unostenta¬ 
tious  entry  presented. 

I  stopped  at  the  new  reservoir  in  the  hill, 
just  inside  the  City,  known  as  “Abraham’s 
Vineyard,”  for  a  drink  of  water,  brought 
into  the  City  by  the  British  engineers  from 
the  hills  beyond  Bethlehem.  In  David’s 
day  warriors  went  to  the  Bethlehem  spring, 
through  hostile  lines,  to  get  a  drink  for 
their  leader.  It  took  a  British  army  to 

[85] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


bring  water  from  beyond  Bethlehem,  and 
it  was  only  sixty-seven  days  from  the  day 
when  they  started  at  the  springs  of  Arub — 
the  old  springs  from  which  Pontius  Pilate 
brought  water  to  Jerusalem — that  water 
was  flowing  at  the  taps  in  the  Holy  City 
with  a  capacity  of  three  hundred  thousand 
gallons  a  day.  Had  I  reached  the  City 
two  days  earlier  I  should  have  had  to  find 
a  cistern,  for  only  the  day  before  my  arrival 
had  the  water-bearers,  the  British  Royal 
Engineers,  reached  the  City.  I  poured  out 
a  libation  to  them  as  David  poured  that 
which  was  brought  to  him,  because  it  was 
“as  the  blood  of  those  that  went  at  the 
peril  of  their  lives,”  but  I  also  drank  in 
gratitude  (for  here  was  water  enough  for 
both  the  libation  and  the  quenching  of  my 
thirst),  and  the  water  from  the  well  of 
Bethlehem  could  not  have  been  sweeter  in 
David’s  memory. 


[86] 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


After  two  hours  in  Jerusalem,  where  I 
had  a  bath  and.  breakfast — the  only  food  I 
had  tasted  on  the  way — I  started  on  again 
down  through  the  Damascus  Gate,  over  the 
rough  Via  Dolorosa,  out  of  St.  Stephen’s 
Gate,  and  down  to  the  Garden  of  Gethsem- 
ane  at  the  foot  of  the  Mount  of  Olives. 
But  instead  of  climbing  over  the  hill  by 
familiar  paths,  I  followed  the  white  road 
round  the  mount,  enveloped  most  of  the 
way  by  clouds  of  gray  dust  from  the  lorries 
and  ambulances,  down  into  and  through 
the  village  of  Bethany,  white  as  the  sepul¬ 
chre  of  Lazarus  from  these  same  clouds. 
The  Master  could  have  found  no  rest  there 
in  these  days  and  nights,  where  the  great 
honking  cars  pass  to  and  from  the  Jericho 
front. 

Beyond  Bethany  there  is  not  a  tree — at 
least  I  did  not  see  one  until  I  reached  the 
plain  of  Jericho.  And  never  did  I  long 

[87] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


more  for  the  shade  of  one,  however  meagre. 
I  even  looked  for  the  shadow  of  a  rock 
when  the  morning  sun  became  almost  un¬ 
bearable.  I  have  never  known  such  heat 
except  at  the  mouth  of  a  furnace.  How 
the  British  troops  spent  months  in  that 
inferno  is  beyond  my  comprehension.  I 
made  other  journeys  down  into  the  valley 
carrying  hospital  supplies  and,  later,  refu¬ 
gees  back  to  their  beyond- Jordan  homes, 
but  most  of  the  way  by  night.  About  two 
miles  out  of  Jericho,  and  a  mile  from  the 
plain,  I  came  upon  a  cave,  whose  darkness 
was  most  welcome.  It  was  large  enough  to 
hold  the  fifty  prophets  whom  Obadiah  hid 
from  the  hate  of  Jezebel,  and  fed  on  bread 
and  water,  but  it  had  only  the  memories 
of  tinned  goods  lying  about.  I  rested,  and 
even  slept  for  a  few  minutes,  with  a  stone 
for  a  pillow,  and  then  pushed  on,  refreshed 
by  the  shadow,  which  was  as  food  brought 

[88] 


Mount  of  Olives  as  seen  from  St.  Stephen’s  Gate. 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


by  a  raven,  and  by  water  from  my  canteen, 
which  was  as  the  brook  Cherith  near  by 
till  it  dried  up.  And  my  canteen  was  rap¬ 
idly  approaching  the  condition  of  the  brook 
(which  in  this  land  does  not  have  the  habit 
of  going  on  forever,  as  Tennyson’s)  when 
the  prophet  Elijah  was  commanded  to  leave 
this  region  and  go  to  Zerephath,  over  on 
the  coast  from  which  I  had  walked.  I  found 
myself  wondering  how  long  it  took  the 
prophet  to  walk  the  same  distance  in  the 
opposite  direction. 

There  had  been  some  movement  in  the 
air  among  the  mountains,  but  when  I 
reached  the  plain  there  was  not  enough  to 
stir  the  frond  of  a  palm.  Everything  was 
as  if  cast  in  bronze  or  brass,  overhanging 
mountains,  sky,  and  the  glistering  plain 
with  its  motionless  life.  I  could  believe 
that  Dore  had  come  to  this  region  for  some 
of  his  illustrations  for  Dante’s  “ Inferno.” 


[89] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


I  felt  myself  to  be  clothed  as  some  of 
Dante’s  creatures  in  hell,  in  garments  of 
lead.  Now  and  then  a  lorry  or  an  ambu¬ 
lance  darted  across  the  sand  like  an  insect, 
but  there  was  otherwise  only  the  silence 
and  immobility  of  the  solitude,  for  it  was 
the  siesta  hour  (2  o’clock)  for  all  human 
life  in  the  valley.  There  was  no  firing  at 
the  front.  Heat  had  brought  a  temporary 
armistice — it  had  made  this  place  a  com¬ 
plete  wilderness  for  the  moment,  and  called 
it  peace. 

Entering  the  City,  which  had  no  chal¬ 
lenging  sentinel  nor  forbidding  wall,  as  it 
had  in  the  days  of  Joshua,  I  found  the  wel¬ 
coming  gate  to  the  “compound,”  officially 
occupied  by  the  military  governor.  He 
was  not  in,  so  I  flung  myself  down  beneath 
a  tree — a  palm  I  think  it  was,  as  it  should 
have  been  in  this  city  of  palm-trees  (I  after¬ 
ward  found,  on  a  later  journey,  from  the 

[90] 


A  scene  in  Jericho. 


FROM  JAFFA  TO  JERICHO 


testimony  of  a  camera  showing  a  real  camel 
resting  under  the  same  tree,  that  it  was 
not).  I  was  by  no  means  exhausted,  but  I 
felt  disposed  in  the  enjoyment  of  its  shade 
to  obey  the  injunction  given  to  certain 
ones  in  Scriptural  days,  to  “tarry  in  Jericho 
until  their  beards  be  grown.” 


[91] 


VII 


ST.  DISMAS 

(At  Latron,  in  Palestine,  there  is  a  chapel  erected  to  the  memory 
of  “  The  Good  Thief,”  known  as  St.  Dismas,  who  is  said  to 
have  been  born  in  this  village.) 

|  AWIXT  Ramleh  and  Latron  one 
I  night 

Upon  the  Jaffa  Road,  gray-white, 
Some  one  beneath  the  stars’  dim  light 
My  steps  apace  was  following. 

White  was  his  face,  the  starlight  showed, 
White  was  his  habit  as  the  road, 

White  with  the  Sharon  dust,  he  strode 
As  my  own  body’s  shadowing. 

I  quickened  my  own  pace  a  bit. 

He  quickened  his  to  equal  it, 

Till,  his  guessed  purpose  to  outwit, 

I  turned  to  find  a  wayside  spring. 

[92] 


ST.  DISMAS 


And  he  too,  but,  to  my  relief, 

On  toward  a  shrine,  as  one  in  grief, 

A  shrine  erected  to  the  thief 

Who’d  hung  with  Christ  in  suffering. 

And  now  I  know  he  was  the  sprite 
Of  this  “Good  Thief”  who  on  that  night 
Along  the  Jaffa  Road,  gray- white. 

My  steps  apace  was  following. 

As  in  his  nights,  prepenitent. 

He  walked  again  these  roads  in  Lent 
And  then  at  twelve  of  midnight  went 
To  pray  the  Lord’s  remembering. 

St.  Dismas,  should  the  lot  be  mine 
To  walk  again  in  Palestine, 

I’ll  find  thy  robber  penant  shrine 
And  make  this  bold  petitioning: 

That  though  to  Paradise  I  go, 

The  God  from  whom  all  blessings  flow 
Will  let  me  walk  by  night  below 
In  roads  of  my  earth  wandering. 

[93] 


VIII 

FROM  REERSHEBA 


IN  the  phrase  that  is  current  wherever 
the  Bible  is  read,  Beersheba  is  at  the 
end  of  the  journey,  and  not  at  the  be¬ 
ginning.  It  was  the  farthest  outpost  of 
the  Land  of  Promise.  It  was  off  into  the 
wilderness,  beyond  Beersheba,  that  Hagar 
wandered  with  her  boy  Ishmael,  and  that 
Elijah  fled  from  the  woman-wrath  of  Jeze¬ 
bel,  for  when  he  left  Beersheba  he  went  “a 
day’s  journey  into  the  wilderness.” 

But  one  of  the  most  appealing  and  most 
picturesque  journeys  of  all  history,  though 
a  brief  one,  was  made  from  Beersheba  as 
the  starting-point;  it  was  the  journey  on 
which  Abraham  set  out  when  he  went  with 

[94] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


his  little  son  Isaac  to  offer  him  up  for  a 
burnt  offering  on  Mount  Moriah. 

And  it  was  from  the  well  which  Abraham 
is  said  to  have  digged  (or  one  of  seven),  the 
well  to  which  the  very  name  Beersheba,  the 
place  of  oath,  is  memorial  (because  it  was 
there,  in  witness  of  the  digging  of  the  well 
that  Abimelech  and  Abraham  swore  unto 
one  another  and  made  covenant),  it  was 
from  this  well  that  I  started  on  my  journey 
northward  as  far  as  I  could  at  that  time  go 
in  Palestine  toward  Dan.  I  would  go  as 
Abraham  to  Mount  Moriah,  and  thence  I 
would  go,  if  the  English  advances  made 
this  possible,  at  least  to  Shechem,  where 
the  Israelites  buried  the  bones  of  Joseph 
who  had  been  “embalmed  and  put  in  a 
coffin”  in  Egypt,  after  they  had  carried 
these  bones  forty  years  in  the  wilderness. 

I  started,  not  as  Abraham,  early  in  the 
morning,  but  at  noon,  when  the  mid-August 

[95] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


sunshine  was  blazing  over  the  desert  to  the 
south.  But  before  evening  I  passed  him 
somewhere  near  the  foot-hills  of  Judaea,  in 
the  level  stretches  of  the  land  of  Simeon — 
Simeon,  who  in  Jacob’s  roster  of  his  sons, 
was  set  down  immortally  as  one  who  “in 
anger  slew  men  and  in  self-will  houghed 
oxen.”  But  Abraham  had  very  good  rea¬ 
son  for  not  wishing  to  get  to  the  end  of  his 
journey  earlier  than  he  must,  for  when  he 
reached  the  Mount  he  was,  for  aught  he 
knew,  to  sacrifice  his  only  son  through 
whom  the  promise  of  his  becoming  the 
father  of  a  multitude  of  nations  was  to  be 
fulfilled.  I  saw  him  and  Isaac  toiling  slowly 
on  the  way  far  ahead  of  me  toward  evening. 
They  stopped  early  for  the  first  night.  The 
father  was  very  gentle  with  the  boy,  who 
did  not  suspect  his  own  fate.  As  I  passed 
them  I  could  see  Abraham  looking  away 
from  the  boy  toward  the  heaven  and  its 

[96] 


The  temple  area  on  Mount  Moriah. 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


stars  without  number,  and  thinking,  doubt¬ 
less,  that  Eliezer  of  Damascus  might,  after 
all,  become  the  possessor  of  his  house. 

I  thought  of  this  ancient  father  and  son 
through  the  night,  but  I  thought,  too,  of 
the  thousands  of  fathers  whose  sons  were 
marching  to  sacrifice  that  very  night,  in 
Europe,  marching  to  the  places  of  burnt 
offering  on  hundreds  of  mounts  from  Kem- 
mel  to  Moab,  and  with  no  certainty  of  any 
such  substitute  for  their  sons  as  Abraham 
found  at  the  last  moment.  And  now 
America  has  come  to  the  trial  of  her  faith 
in  the  tenets  of  her  profession  and  her 
teaching.  As  an  American  I  am  proud  of 
the  response  to  the  test.  America  has  not 
questioned  the  call  of  justice  and  of  human 
right.  I  see  the  millions  going  forward, 
not  slowly,  as  did  Abraham,  who  took  three 
days  to  make  the  journey  to  the  site  of 
Mount  Moriah  (and  in  my  heart  I,  a  father, 

[97] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


forgave  him),  but  by  forced  marches. 
America’s  going  up  from  her  Beersheba  is 
indeed  a  more  glorious  chapter  in  history 
than  Abraham’s.  America  looks  at  the 
stars  in  her  own  heavens,  not  doubting  that 
the  sacrifice,  whatever  it  may  be,  will  not 
quench  that  which  these  stars  symbolize. 

As  for  myself,  I  kept  praying  that  if  I 
had  my  own  lads  with  me  under  these 
stars,  I  should  not  loiter  nor  saunter.  As 
it  was,  I  travelled  in  one  afternoon  and 
night  over  the  road  that  it  took  Abraham 
and  his  son  more  than  three  days  to  travel, 
for  it  was  on  the  morning  of  the  third  day 
that  Abraham  4 ‘lifted  up  his  eyes  and  saw 
the  place  afar  off,”  and  then  went  forward 
with  the  boy  alone,  carrying  the  fire  in  his 
hand  and  a  knife,  while  the  boy  bore  the 
wood. 

It  is  said  in  guide-books  to  Palestine, 
published  before  the  war,  that  one  who 

[98] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


travels  below  Hebron  should  take  a  “dra¬ 
goman  and  horses  and  tents,”  together  with 
an  “escort  of  Turkish  soldiers”;  and  I  have 
since  my  journey  been  told  that  one  in  those 
days  needed  for  safety  an  escort  of  a  dozen 
men.  But  that  precaution,  now  that  the 
English  have  come,  seems  not  to  be  neces¬ 
sary.  I  travelled  alone  through  the  night 
without  serious  molestation.  I  was  stopped 
by  a  group  of  men  at  dusk  and  asked  rather 
savagely  for  cigarettes  and  “backsheesh,” 
both  of  which  requests  I  had  to  refuse,  after 
some  parleying,  because  I  had  no  cigarettes, 
and  I  was  not  disposed  to  give  “back¬ 
sheesh,”  but  no  violence  was  offered  (though 
I  had  no  weapon  beyond  my  hickory  stick, 
which  had  come  with  me  from  far  America’s 
trees,  with  rings  of  many  seasons  in  its 
memory,  and  with  the  names  of  places 
where  it  has  been  the  companion  of  my 
walks,  from  London  to  Beersheba). 

[99] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


On  the  contrary,  great  courtesy  and  hos¬ 
pitality  were  shown  me  along  the  way  by 
the  fellaheen  as  well  as  by  the  British  offi¬ 
cers  and  men.  This  wayside  kindness 
showed  itself  chiefly  in  keeping  me  supplied 
with  water.  (I  can  understand  why  bless¬ 
ings  were  promised  by  Christ  to  those  who 
gave  cups  of  cold  water.)  In  the  heat  of 
the  afternoon,  when  the  supply  in  my  two 
canteens  was  getting  low  (and  I  wished  to 
preserve  in  each  a  little  of  the  water  with 
which  I  had  filled  them  at  the  very  start 
from  Abraham’s  well,  or  one  of  his  seven 
wells),  I  came  upon  a  company  of  men  put¬ 
ting  up  telephone -lines  from  Hebron  to 
Beersheba.  They  filled  one  brimming  cup 
for  me  from  their  “fantasia,”  and  then  told 
me  of  their  camp,  six  or  seven  kilometres 
beyond,  where  I  should  find  other  “fan¬ 
tasias” — as  I  did,  with  most  hospitable 
attendants,  who  offered  also  bread  and 
cheese  and  syrup. 


[100] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


In  the  late  afternoon  I  passed  the  only 
village  at  the  roadside  between  Beersheba 
and  Hebron — the  ancient  village  of  Debir, 
which  now  has  the  name  of  Dahariyeh, 
but  has  probably  much  the  aspect  of  its 
ancient  self,  except  that  in  Joshua’s  time  it 
doubtless  had  walls.  It  was  then  the  vil¬ 
lage  of  the  giants — the  Enakim — who  stood 
out  against  the  Israelites  till  Othniel,  a 
kinsman  of  Caleb,  overcame  the  city,  en¬ 
couraged  to  such  hardihood  by  Caleb’s  prof¬ 
fer  of  his  sister  in  marriage  to  the  warrior 
who  should  first  enter  its  citadel.  In  place 
of  the  citadel  stands  the  most  conspicuous 
object  as  one  approaches  from  the  south, 
the  great  compost-heap,  higher  than  any  of 
the  houses,  even  that  of  the  sheik  himself. 
It  is  the  village  store  of  fuel,  and  so  far  from 
being  looked  upon  as  an  offensive  place,  is 
a  centre  where  the  women  gather  when 
they  are  free  from  their  work,  which  must 
be  seldom,  for  the  women  of  Palestine  are 

[  101  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


a  tirelessly  industrious  lot,  not  for  the  most 
part  in  work  in  which  they  can  have  the 
satisfaction  of  seeing  things  of  beauty,  or  of 
lasting  use,  develop  under  their  hands,  but 
in  the  ceaseless  bearing  of  burdens,  the 
carrying  of  water,  the  grinding  of  wheat  or 
corn,  the  endless  drudgeries  with  not  the 
slightest  relief — or  so  it  would  seem  to  a 
casual  observer.  A  hard  lot  they  have, 
and  a  sad,  unhappy,  dejected  sex  they 
seem.  Seldom  does  one  see  a  smiling  face. 
The  men  are  solemn  enough,  but  except  for 
those  who  live  sedentary  lives  in  the  cities, 
they  seem  sturdy  and  physically  virile. 
They  “lord  it”  over  the  women.  It  is  not 
an  infrequent  scene  to  see  a  man  mounted 
on  his  donkey,  the  wife  following  on  foot, 
usually  carrying  a  burden. 

It  was  on  this  road  to  Jerusalem,  near 
Bethlehem,  that  I  saw  a  father  so  mounted, 
the  wife  following,  carrying  the  child,  and 

[  102  ] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


another  child  following  her.  I  think  the 
father  was  becoming  conscious  of  our  West¬ 
ern  attitude  of  women  and  children  first,  for 
while  I  was  preparing  to  take  a  snap-shot 
of  the  little  family  the  father  was  having 
the  child  shifted  to  his  arms.  Or  was  it  his 
paternal  pride  showing  itself  in  his  desire 
to  have  the  child  photographed  with  him¬ 
self  ? 

I  have  often  thought  of  this  scene  and 
expressed  the  hope  that  Joseph  did  not  treat 
Mary  so,  that  he  did  not  make  her  walk 
and  carry  the  child  as  they  journeyed  down 
into  Egypt. 

But,  not  to  get  to  my  own  journey’s  end 
before  I  have  actually  traversed  it,  I  wish 
to  speak  too  of  the  hospitable  spirit  of  the 
villages  along  the  way.  At  this  particular 
village  of  the  ancient  giants,  the  “muktar” 
called  to  me  as  I  was  passing,  whether  in 
friendliness  or  in  hostility  to  the  passing 

[  103] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


stranger  I  could  not  tell,  till  by  signs  he 
made  me  understand  that  he  was  asking  if 
I  would  not  stop  and  sleep  in  his  village,  or 
have  food  and  drink.  I  gladly  accepted  his 
proffer  of  water,  and  he  sent  a  bright  little 
fellow  pattering  off  up  the  hill  to  the  well 
with  one  of  my  canteens.  When  it  came 
back  filled  and  coolly  moist,  he  tried  to 
prevent  my  giving  the  boy  a  bit  of  imme¬ 
diate  reward  for  his  act  of  kindness. 

I  had  stopped  at  this  village  for  a  few 
minutes  in  the  morning,  attracted  by  the 
scene  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  road, 
where  between  fifty  and  a  hundred  villagers 
were  threshing  millet,  some  driving  the  oxen 
round  and  round,  some  winnowing  with 
the  pitchfork,  some  sifting  with  the  sieve, 
some  gathering  the  grain,  some  carrying 
away  the  straw.  It  was  an  interesting  and 
picturesque  scene,  but  it  was  also  one  of  the 
happiest  scenes,  suggestive  of  the  wide- 

[  104  ] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


spread  and  higher  happiness  that  might 
come — will  come  again  to  the  Holy  Land 
when  the  hills  as  well  as  the  plains  are  blos¬ 
soming  and  men  are  laboring  profitably  in 
some  intelligent  co-operation  with  Provi¬ 
dence,  and  incidentally  giving  the  women 
freedom  to  live  as  creatures  with  souls,  to 
enjoy  Browning’s  “Saul,”  let  us  say,  more 
than  the  gossip  at  the  compost-heap. 

The  walk  across  the  plains  had  been  hot 
and  uneventful  but  not  uninteresting  to 
one  born  on  the  prairies  of  the  United 
States  and  accustomed  to  great  level 
stretches  and  horizons.  There  was,  how¬ 
ever,  the  added  charm  of  the  wilderness 
mountains  rising  hazily  on  the  eastern  edge 
of  the  plain,  and  of  the  Judaean  hills  ahead 
— a  charm  which  was  a  little  disturbed  by 
the  thought  of  having  to  make  the  ascent. 
But  even  the  winding  white  road  had  its 
own  fascination,  and  when,  as  several  times 

[105] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


happened,  I  saw  a  gray  cloud  going  before 
me  in  the  solitude,  though  I  knew  it  was 
only  a  little  whirlwind  that  was  moving 
along  and  whirling  the  dust,  I  could  under¬ 
stand  how  the  children  of  Israel  might  have 
seen  in  such  a  natural  phenomenon  the 
“pillar  of  cloud”  that  gave  them  guidance 
on  their  way  across  the  desert  not  far  away. 
Once  the  cloud  became  clearly  a  great  gray 
cross  lifted  against  the  blue  sky  over  the 
Judaean  hills. 

Nowhere  else  in  lower  Palestine  was  the 
far  past  so  close.  There  was  no  near  as¬ 
sociation  for  the  most  of  the  way  across 
the  plain  to  disturb  the  consciousness  of  the 
past,  and  I  was  free  to  spend  most  of  the 
time  in  the  company  of  Abraham  and  his 
boy  Isaac,  Elijah,  David,  and  others  of 
those  ancient  days. 

And  when  the  night  came  on  it  was  al¬ 
most  as  light  as  day,  for  the  moon  rose  in 

[106] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


full  orb  out  of  the  desert  of  Maon,  where 
once  dwelt  the  churlish  Nabal  and  his  wife 
Abigail,  who,  after  her  drunken  husband’s 
“heart  had  died  within  him  and  he  became 
a  stone,”  received  a  proffer  of  marriage 
from  David,  and  who  (though  insisting  with 
a  humility  which  is  expected  of  the  man 
rather  than  the  woman,  in  America,  that 
she  was  only  a  servant  fit  to  wash  the  feet 
of  the  servants  of  such  a  man)  hasted  and, 
attended  by  her  five  damsels,  went  in 
stately  procession  to  become  his  wife.  One 
could  find  here  a  setting  for  a  romance  if 
the  Scriptural  record  did  not  tell  us  in  the 
next  sentence  that  David  also  took  Ahi- 
noam  of  Jezreel,  and  they  were  also  both  of 
them  his  wives.”  As  it  is,  it  gives  fit  back¬ 
ground  to  the  incident,  which  must  appeal 
to  every  boy,  of  David’s  taking  the  spear 
and  cruse  of  water  from  behind  the  head 
of  Saul  as  he  lay  asleep  in  his  place  “among 

[107] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


the  wagons,”  when  in  pursuit  of  David; 
and  to  that  incident  which  followed  the 
next  day  when  David,  on  one  of  the  bare 
hilltops  called  to  Abner,  and  in  treasured 
sarcasm  rebuked  the  war-lord  for  not  keep¬ 
ing  better  watch  over  his  king. 

And  one  is  ready,  too,  to  believe  the  tra¬ 
dition  that  Judas  Iscariot  (Judas  of  Keriot) 
was  born  somewhere  over  in  this  wilderness 
to  the  east,  which  turns  to  blackness  when 
the  moon  crosses  the  path  and  lights  the 
western  hills  toward  Gaza. 

Among  the  Judaean  hills  one  has  other 
attendants.  One  to  whom  I  was  especially 
indebted  was  the  daughter  of  Caleb,  Ach- 
sah,  she  to  whom  he  gave  the  4 'upper 
springs  and  the  nether  springs.”  Not  far 
from  Hebron  had  been  pointed  out  to  me 
the  "upper  springs”  as  I  went  to  Beer- 
sheba  in  the  morning  of  the  day,  but  toward 
midnight  I  was  more  anxious  to  find  the 

[108] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


“nether  springs.”  It  was  not  Achsah  who 
discovered  them  to  me,  but  it  must  have 
been  one  of  her  descendants,  this  lone  wan¬ 
derer  who  came  out  of  the  fields,  and  who 
not  only  showed  me  the  springs,  but  also 
instructed  me  in  the  best  way  to  lap  up 
water  with  both  hands  (instead  of  but  one, 
as  did  the  successful  candidates  for  Gideon’s 
band).  I  never  dreamed,  Achsah,  when  I 
stumbled  over  your  name  as  I  read  it  at 
my  mother’s  knee  (and  my  mother’s  name 
meant  in  Scotch  4 'daughter  of  the  place  of 
the  upper  springs”),  that  I  should  some 
day  be  grateful  to  you  for  asking  your 
father  to  give  you  those  springs  that  have 
continued  to  flow  on  through  the  centuries 
since  and  quench  my  thirst  in  the  twentieth 
century  A.  D. 

Refreshed,  I  went  on  toward  Hebron,  a 
place  where  Western  travellers  in  days  past 
had  been  badly  treated,  I  am  told,  but 

[109] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


where  I  had  found  most  cordial  welcome  as 
I  had  passed  southward  in  the  morning  (the 
keeper  of  the  Cave  of  Machpelah  showing 
me  every  possible  courtesy,  insisting  that  I 
look  into  the  place  where  Joseph’s  bones 
were  kept,  since  I  might  not  be  able  to  go 
to  Shechem,  where,  according  to  the  Book 
of  Joshua,  they  were  buried,  and  offering 
me  more  privileges  than  I  could  accept). 
But  instead  of  walking  down  through  the 
shadowed  streets  of  the  city,  by  night  I 
took  a  by-path,  a  lane  with  high  walls  on 
either  side,  down  through  the  Vale  of 
Eschol,  where  the  Israelitish  spies  had 
found  the  marvellous  grapes. 

It  is  the  law  of  custom  in  the  East,  I  am 
told,  that  one  may  enter  a  vineyard  and 
eat  all  one  wishes,  but  may  not  carry  any¬ 
thing  away.  I  had  been  without  food  on 
the  journey,  and  my  “mouth  watered”  for 
grapes  (for,  as  when  the  spies  entered  He- 

[110] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


bron,  it  “was  the  time  of  the  first-ripe 
grapes”),  and  yet  at  that  time  of  night  I 
hardly  dared  to  enter  one  of  the  continu¬ 
ous  vineyards,  not  knowing  whether  some 
watchman  sleeping  in  the  towers  that 
guard  them  might  not  take  me  for  a  ma¬ 
rauder  instead  of  an  honest  but  hungry 
pilgrim.  In  vain  I  searched  the  vines 
hanging  over  the  walls  to  find  a  chance 
cluster,  and  went  on  my  way  with  no  such 
fortune  as  the  two  men  who,  long  ago, 
found  there  one  cluster  so  large  that  it  took 
both  of  them  to  carry  it. 

Higher  up  in  the  hills,  near  the  place  of 
the  “upper  springs,”  I  passed  a  village  in 
its  slumbers,  a  village  that  had  slept  through 
a  million  and  a  half  of  nights,  for  it  was 
one  of  the  Canaanitish  cities  taken  by 
Joshua  and  given  as  an  inheritance  to 
Judah. 

I  had  visited  this  village  in  the  morning 

[1111 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


of  the  day,  a  village  that  is  four  thousand 
years  old,  but  without  certain  facilities 
which  the  newest  town  in  Oklahoma  would 
insist  upon  having  in  as  many  hours  as  this 
village  has  known  years.  It  stands,  or 
rather  sits,  upon  a  hill  almost  bare  of  trees, 
and  looks  by  day  at  the  left  between  the 
mountains  to  the  Mediterranean  Ocean, 
and  at  the  right  across  the  Dead  Sea  to  the 
mountains  which  give  their  background  of 
mystery  to  so  many  places  in  Palestine.  It 
could  have  seen  the  star  over  Bethlehem  if 
it  had  been  awake  on  the  holy  night.  And 
if  it  had  risen  and  moved  itself  to  the  other 
edge  of  the  hill,  it  might  have  seen  the 
burning  lamp  that  passed  between  the  car¬ 
casses  in  Abraham’s  dream  beneath  the 
oaks  of  Mamre,  a  few  miles  away. 

This  village,  Halhul,  is  more  like  one  of 
our  Indian  adobe  towns  than  any  other 
communities  in  the  States,  except  that  the 

[112] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


huts  are  of  stone.  There  are  no  streets, 
only  winding,  labyrinthian  paths  round 
and  about,  up  and  down,  sometimes  over 
the  roofs  of  the  huts — paths  made  by  the 
feet  of  men,  women,  children,  and  donkeys 
through  the  centuries.  There  are  no  vehi¬ 
cles,  wagons,  automobiles,  or  street-cars. 
There  is  no  post-office,  for  never  a  letter 
comes  to  the  village,  I  suppose.  There  are 
no  newspapers,  no  schools,  no  places  of 
amusement  (there  is  one  man,  at  least,  who 
plays  a  primitive  pipe),  no  running  waters, 
no  signs,  no  stores,  so  far  as  I  could  see,  no 
libraries  nor  books,  no  women’s  clubs,  no 
telephones — there  was  nothing  to  give  the 
inhabitants  communication  with  the  world 
beyond  the  sight  of  their  eyes  or  the  reach 
of  their  feet.  And  few,  I  suppose,  had 
journeyed  beyond  Hebron  to  the  south,  or 
Jerusalem  at  the  north. 

Women  and  children  fled  as  birds  or 

[113] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


prairie  dogs  into  their  burrows  at  our  ap¬ 
proach  in  the  morning.  They  had  remem¬ 
bered  reason  to  fear  the  stranger,  especially 
the  stranger  in  uniform,  the  Turkish  officer, 
and  they  hid  as  by  instinct  without  wait¬ 
ing  to  discover  what  sort  of  uniform  it  was. 
At  last,  in  one  corner  of  the  labyrinth,  we 
found  the  older  men  of  the  village  gathered 
under  a  great  tree  just  outside  the  “  guest¬ 
house,”  a  dark,  windowless,  single-roomed 
hut,  with  a  platform  running  along  three 
sides.  The  interpreter,  with  much  salaam¬ 
ing,  told  of  America  (a  land  of  which,  I 
suppose,  they  had  no  knowledge,  for  I 
think  no  one  had  gone  from  that  village  to 
the  far-away  country),  and  expressed  our 
special  interest  in  the  children  of  Palestine. 
There  was  most  polite  response  in  true 
Oriental  fashion,  tempered,  however,  by 
a  reticence  of  fear  lest  the  children  might 
be  made  the  basis  for  a  new  tax.  Gradu- 


[114] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


ally  this  suspicion  was  dissipated  and  the 
children  came  out  of  their  hiding,  pale, 
miserably  clad.  Perhaps  the  sturdier  ones 
were  out  in  the  vineyards. 

Halhul !  What  a  new  life  would  come 
into  your  old  stone  body  if  the  children  of 
a  typical  American  village  could  come  to 
sing  and  play  with  your  children.  Halhul ! 
How  many  summers  will  you  sleep  in  the 
sun,  how  many  winters  will  you  shiver  in 
your  windowless  huts,  before  the  civiliza¬ 
tion  which  has  come  up  to  your  gates, 
across  the  seas  and  up  from  the  ports  of 
Egypt,  shall  not  only  pass  like  the  automo¬ 
bile  at  your  feet  or  fly  like  the  aeroplane 
over  your  head,  but  will  enter  your  heart 
with  its  joys,  its  higher  joys  and  its  deeper 
sorrows.  Halhul !  Will  not  the  new  Joshua 
give  you  an  inheritance  not  merely  to  some 
particular  tribe  or  nation,  but  to  the  world, 
that  it  may  add  its  cosmic  gifts  in  this  age 

[115] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


to  those  which  you  have  gathered  out  of 
your  long  past  with  its  narrow  horizon — a 
horizon  whose  edge  is  not  cut  by  the  sky¬ 
scrapers  of  America ! 

Halhul !  I  should  like  to  come  to  you 
in  the  year  of  our  Lord  2000  ! 

I  did  not  wish  to  disturb  this  village  in 
its  sleep,  though  I  wondered  whether  the 
world  outside  would  ever  miss  it  if  it  did 
not  wake  up  again  from  its  houses  that 
seemed  more  like  tombs  than  homes.  In¬ 
deed  the  Roman  rock-tombs  near  by  seemed 
more  homelike,  for  in  the  cave  open  to  the 
moonlight,  where  I  had  in  the  morning 
seen  the  hundreds  of  niches  that  once  held 
cinerary  urns,  I  saw  the  maidenhair-ferns 
clinging  like  weeping  human  memories  over 
some  of  the  niches,  but  in  deeper  mourning, 
for  the  green  of  the  daylight  had  been 
turned  to  the  blackness  of  crape.  And  the 
gray  lizards  and  the  black  serpents  were  no 

[116] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


longer  astir  as  in  the  morning,  to  take  one’s 
thought  from  those  who  had  laid  them¬ 
selves  down  to  rest  in  the  Jewish  and  Chris¬ 
tian  caves  near  by. 

It  was  up  on  the  hill  just  outside  this 
village  that,  according  to  tradition,  the 
prophet  Jonah  was  buried.  Jonah,  that 
first  municipal  reformer,  who  complained 
against  the  Almighty  because  the  fate 
which  he  predicted  did  not  overtake  the 
city  of  Nineveh,  Jonah  who  was  “angry 
for  the  gourd”  that  grew  up  in  the  night 
and  perished  the  next  day.  If  thou  couldst 
but  see  this  eternal  village  in  which  thou 
art  sleeping,  Jonah,  thou  wouldst  indeed 
know  that  the  Lord  was  “a  gracious  God, 
and  full  of  compassion.” 

I  was  challenged  in  a  valley  not  far  be¬ 
yond  by  a  lone  sentry  at  the  roadside,  the 
only  person  I  had  seen  for  hours  except 
the  native  “pilgrims  of  the  night”  on  camels 

[  H7] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


or  donkeys  or  in  groups  on  foot,  the  sound 
of  whose  voices,  mingled  with  the  tinkling 
of  the  camel -bells,  remains  as  music  in  my 
ears,  for  all  gave  that  melodious  salutation 
which  was  as  soft  upon  the  air  as  the  inton¬ 
ing  of  a  benediction — “Sai-ee-da,”  “Sai-ee- 
da”  (like  Aida,  with  a  soft,  sibilant  prefix), 
all  through  the  night.  The  “Plait !”  of  the 
sentry  in  simulated  English  gave  a  mo¬ 
ment’s  shock  and  disturbed  my  converse 
with  those  of  the  past  who  had  accompanied 
me,  but  were  unseen  of  the  sentry.  They 
all  fled  as  I  tried  to  make  the  East  Indian 
guard  with  his  menacing  rifle  understand 
that  I  was  a  “ friend.”  Whether  I  had  suc¬ 
ceeded  I  did  not  know,  for  I  could  not  un¬ 
derstand  whether  he  was  permitting  me  to 
proceed  or  ordering  me  to  turn  into  the 
guard-house  (where  indeed  I  should  have 
been  glad  to  repose  for  a  while),  but  I 
started  on,  and  as  he  did  not  fire  I  assumed 

[118] 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


that  he  recognized  me  for  the  friend  I  was, 
with  no  desire  as  to  the  springs  he  was 
guarding  (the  springs  from  which  the  water 
was  led  into  Jerusalem),  except  that  I  might 
drink  of  them. 

Over  hills  and  through  valleys  that  were 
awesome  with  the  moon  shadows — were 
these  not  perhaps  the  very  valleys  that  had 
given  the  Psalmist  his  metaphor  of  the 
“Valley  of  the  Shadow”? — I  journeyed  on 
by  the  winding  road,  down  at  last  past  Solo¬ 
mon’s  Pools  (one  empty  of  water,  one  al¬ 
most  empty,  and  the  third  planted  in  toma¬ 
toes  and  other  vegetables),  down  into  the 
fruitful  Vale  of  Urtas,  which  Solomon  may 
have  had  in  mind  when  he  wrote  of  de¬ 
scending  into  the  garden  “to  see  the  fruits 
of  the  valley,  to  see  whether  the  vine  flour¬ 
ished  and  the  pomegranates  budded,”  filled 
now  with  Anzac  troops  beginning  to  stir 
themselves  at  the  first  premonition  of  day. 

[119] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


Then  on  till  the  roofs  of  the  little  town  of 
Bethlehem  began  to  appear  in  the  dawn. 
The  morning  star  was  burning  in  the  sky 
above  it  with  a  brilliancy  that  seemed  su¬ 
pernal.  Over  the  Bethlehem  on  my  horizon 
it  stood,  toward  the  Shepherds’  Field,  till 
the  walls  of  the  little  city  itself  hid  it  from 
my  view. 

Beyond  Bethlehem  the  once  narrow  camel  - 
road  over  which  the  Magi  had  come  broad¬ 
ened  into  a  dusty  highway  and  began  to  fill 
with  a  throng  of  people  going  to  and  from 
the  Holy  City.  The  refugees  from  Jericho, 
encamped  in  the  field  opposite  the  tomb  of 
Rachel,  were  rising  frowzled  from  their  no¬ 
mad  beds.  Lorries  and  ambulances  were 
starting  from  camps  at  the  roadside  for  the 
hellish  places  from  which  these  refugees  had 
fled,  down  where  the  British  forces  were 
holding  their  trenches  awaiting  the  day  of 
advance.  A  battalion  of  Anzac  cavalry 

[  120  ] 


The  author  as  he  appeared  after  going  from  Beersheba  to  Jerusalem. 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


was  passing  in  the  opposite  direction  for  its 
period  of  rest  after  the  night’s  riding.  In¬ 
dian  lancers  and  Indian  infantrymen,  pic¬ 
turesque  even  in  khaki,  looked  and  knelt 
toward  the  dawn  and  their  own  Himalayas. 
Trains  of  camels  from  somewhere  bore  their 
compact  loads  that  might  be  myrrh  or  the 
daily  manna  for  the  troops.  Hundreds  of 
donkeys,  “  Allenby’s  white  mice,”  went  pat¬ 
tering  along.  Aeroplanes  were  mounting 
and  circling,  with  their  hum,  to  scout  or 
perhaps  to  bomb  beyond  the  hills  toward 
Shechem.  Barefoot  women  with  varicol¬ 
ored  burdens  on  their  heads  walked  with 
all  the  stateliness  of  queens  toward  the 
City  of  Peace — the  City  of  Peace  amid 
shepherds’  fields,  now  become  munition 
magazines,  which  were  daily  augmented  by 
what  the  trains  brought  up  from  Egypt, 
and  daily  diminished  by  what  the  trains 
toward  the  front  were  carrying  northward 

[121] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


for  the  redemption  of  Samaria  and  Galilee, 
the  ancient  land  of  the  tribes  of  Benjamin 
and  Ephraim  and  Manasseh  and  Issachar 
and  Zebulon  and  Asher  and  Naphtali  and 
Dan — Dan,  which  I  would  yet  reach — but 
that  is  another  story. 

For  the  day  I  was  content  to  stop  at  the 
Mount  within  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  where 
Abraham  ended  his  sacrificial  journey,  fire 
and  knife  in  hand;  the  Mount  whose  top¬ 
most  rock  was  regarded  as  the  centre  of 
the  world,  the  “stone  of  foundation,”  on 
which  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  once  rested ; 
the  Mount  from  which  Mohammed  is  said 
to  have  ascended  on  his  miraculous  steed; 
the  Mount  over  whose  edges  the  orthodox 
Jew  does  not  dare  to  venture  lest  he  tread 
upon  the  “Holy  of  Holies,”  but  wails  at 
the  wall  of  lamentation  without;  the  Mount 
at  whose  verge  the  Christ  was  crucified  and 
buried,  and  from  whose  rock-hewn  tomb 

[  122  ] 


Tower  of  the  Ascension  on  the  Mount  of  Olives  in  the  background.  Belfry  of  Greek  Chapel  in  the 

foreground. 


FROM  BEERSHEBA 


he  rose.  It  seems  indeed  the  4 ‘centre  of 
the  world,”  and  over  it  all,  as  I  saw  it  that 
morning,  the  Tower  of  the  Ascension  stood 
on  the  Mount  of  Olives  against  the  sunrise. 


[  123  ] 


IX 


I  WALKED  LAST  NIGHT  IN  THE 
SHEPHERDS’  FIELD 

I 


I  WALKED  one  night  in  The  Shepherds’ 
Field; 

The  stars  in  their  wonted  courses 
wheeled 

And  no  new  glory  the  skies  revealed — 
There  was  no  peace  on  earth. 

But  as  I  climbed  the  Bethlehem  hill 
I  saw  one  bend  o’er  one  who  was  ill 
And  another  bearing  coals  to  fill 
A  neighbor’s  empty  hearth — 

And  I  knew  that  the  Christ  was  there. 


II 

I  walked  up  the  Mount  a  little  space 
And  peered  through  the  shadows  for  His  face 

[  124  ] 


IN  THE  SHEPHERD’S  FIELD 


But  found  Him  not  in  the  pictured  place 
Beneath  the  olive-trees; 

Then  turning  toward  Kidron  in  the  night 
I  saw  the  men  on  their  way  to  fight 
In  Jordan’s  hell  for  a  thing  called  Right, 
Nor  hating  their  enemies — 

And  I  knew  that  the  Christ  was  there. 

Ill 

Then  I  walked  alone  in  Galilee 
Where  He  fed  the  thousands  by  the  sea 
And  taught  and  wrought  in  His  ministry 
Of  human  brotherhood. 

There  did  a  Presence  my  way  attend 
And  there  I  heard  the  voice  of  a  Friend 
Say,  “Lo,  I  am  with  you  to  the  end.” 

And  my  heart  understood — 

I  knew  that  the  Christ  was  there. 


[  125  ] 


X 


TO  DAN 

A  FTER  the  delivery  of  the  Holy  City, 
in  December  of  1917,  the  deliverers 
“dug  in”  about  fifteen  miles  north 
of  Jerusalem,  their  trenches  and  barbed- 
wire  entanglements  stretching  intermit¬ 
tently  from  the  Mediterranean  Sea  to  the 
Jordan  River.  And  seldom  a  day  passed 
of  the  months  that  I  was  there  that  one 
did  not  hear  the  sound  of  the  guns  some¬ 
where  along  the  line  in  that  little  theatre  of 
battle  that  has  been  the  stage  of  war’s  trag¬ 
edy  and  pageantry  since  the  wanderers  in 
the  desert  crossed  the  Jordan  into  Jericho, 
following  their  wooden  ark,  under  promise 
that  the  living  God  would  drive  out  the 
Canaanite  and  the  Hittite  and  the  Hivite 

[  126  ] 


TO  DAN 


and  the  Girgashite  and  the  Amorite  and 
the  Jebusite  before  them,  and  give  them  a 
land  “flowing  with  milk  and  honey.” 

A  little  theatre  !  A  mere  “sector ”  !  But 
with  nearly  all  the  peoples  of  the  Allies 
there  except  our  own:  East  Indian,  Anzac, 
Armenian,  French,  Algerian,  Italian,  Eng¬ 
lish  with  their  first  Irish  Regiment,  and  a 
battalion  of  the  Black  Watch,  and  the 
Welsh,  and  the  South  African.  (It  was  a 
great  strapping  South  African  fellow,  named 
Hornby,  that  carried  me  in  his  aeroplane 
the  morning  that  I  made  the  trip  through 
the  sky  [“Via  Dei”]  from  Egypt  to  the 
Judsean  hills.)  And  at  the  far  end  of  the 
line  the  Hebrew  regiment  over  in  the  land 
of  Moab,  toward  the  valley  where  I  one 
day  saw  the  great  gun,  “Jericho  Jane,” 
lying  “in  the  burn,”  as  one  of  the  Scotch 
officers  said. 

For  myself  I  felt  the  reproach  of  Debo- 

[  127  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


rah,  who  said  to  Reuben  after  the  battle 
with  Sisera — Reuben,  at  whose  water¬ 
courses  there  were  “searchings  of  heart”: 
“Why  sattest  thou  among  the  sheepfolds 
to  hear  the  pipings  for  the  flocks,  while  the 
people  of  Zebulon  jeoparded  their  lives 
unto  death?”  The  response  to  this  re¬ 
proach  came  not  long  after  from  the  West¬ 
ern  Front,  and  it  was  down  on  the  edge  of 
the  sands  of  the  desert  that  I  heard  it,  the 
splendid  response  made  by  the  behavior  of 
our  Americans  at  Chateau-Thierry.  None 
the  less,  I  regretted  that  we  of  America 
could  not  have  been  with  that  little  world 
army  in  the  recovery  of  this  sacred  land 
from  the  hand  of  the  Turk,  though  it  was 
a  great  satisfaction  to  be  of  that  little 
American  army  of  Red  Cross  doctors  and 
nurses,  social  workers  and  engineers,  min¬ 
istering  to  those  who  suffered  most  from 
the  war.  We  “  sat  among  the  sheepfolds,” 

[  128  ] 


TO  DAN 


but  not  to  hear  the  “piping  for  the  flocks”; 
there  were  no  flocks  to  pipe  for.  It  was  to 
care  for  the  human  beings  that  were  scat¬ 
tered  like  lost  sheep  among  the  hills  of 
Judsea,  or  huddled  like  starving  ones  within 
the  walls  of  the  villages. 

For  though  the  Amorite  and  the  Jebusite 
and  all  the  others  mentioned  by  Joshua 
had  gone  and  the  land  had  been  cleansed, 
it  was  like  the  house  mentioned  in  the  para¬ 
ble,  from  which  the  devil  had  been  driven 
out,  but  to  which  other  devils  returned,  so 
that  the  last  state  was  worse  than  the  first. 

And  so  it  was  that  the  only  milk  with 
which  the  land  flowed  (except  of  goats)  was 
that  which  the  quartermaster  brought  up 
through  Egypt,  from  far  pastures,  in  con¬ 
densed-milk  tins.  I  did  taste  honey  but  I 
felt  as  favored  as  Jonathan  on  the  day 
when,  following  close  upon  the  fleeing  Philis¬ 
tines,  he  thrust  his  rod  into  a  honeycomb 

[  129  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


and  tasted  of  the  honey,  when  all  the  rest 
were  forbidden  to  eat.  Once,  by  the  kind¬ 
ness  of  the  general  in  command  of  all  Pal¬ 
estine,  I  was  able  to  know  how  the  Chil¬ 
dren  of  Israel  fared  in  the  desert,  for  we 
had  quail — live  quail  that  covered  our 
camp,  flying  in  from  the  desert  toward 
Gaza.  The  bread  did  not  come  as  hoar¬ 
frost  upon  the  ground,  but  as  daily  ration, 
shipped  in  with  all  the  meticulous  provi¬ 
dence  of  a  wonderful  system  of  provision. 
And  the  water  was  not  gotten  by  smiting 
a  rock,  but  by  carrying  it  long  distances  in 
pipes  or  on  the  backs  of  camels. 

So  it  was  for  months  that  the  army  and 
the  people  were  fed  and  given  to  drink, 
while  all  looked  forward  to  the  day  of  the 
complete  deliverance,  the  day  of  the  final 
battle  “in  the  Valley  of  Decision.” 

Wishing  to  Valk  instantly  forward  when 
that  day  or  night  arrived,  to  be  “ready 

[  130  ] 


Evacuated  village  near  the  front 


TO  DAN 


when  the  bridegroom  came,”  I  determined 
to  go  to  the  farthest  front  in  the  direction 
of  Dan,  and  so  it  was  that  at  two  o’clock 
one  morning  I  set  out  for  a  hilltop  identified 
to  me  on  the  map  as  Tel-Azur  (Mountain 
of  Azure,  I  wished  to  translate  uj,  the  out¬ 
look  from  which  one  could  at  least  see 
“over  the  top.” 

The  General  in  charge  of  this  particular 
sector  of  the  front  by  a  special  passport  re¬ 
quired  all  the  guards  along  the  way  to 
show  me  every  possible  courtesy  (as  they 
did  without  such  orders,  even  to  the  “Tom¬ 
mies”  out  toward  the  front,  who  shared 
their  morning  coffee  with  me,  not  recogniz¬ 
ing  me  for  the  Colonel  that  I  was) ;  and  the 
General  in  command  of  the  Occupied  En¬ 
emy  Territory,  which  stretched  up  to 
within  a  civil  distance  of  the  front,  gave 
me  safe-conduct,  but  directed  me  on  no  ac¬ 
count  to  venture  beyond  Bireh  before  day- 

[131] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


light.  With  such  credentials,  though  I 
got  to  the  mountain-top  without  a  single 
challenge  or  questioning  (except  of  my 
own  in  trying  to  find  the  way),  and  under 
such  restraint,  though  it  proved  to  be  need¬ 
less,  since  I  could  not  have  reached  Bireh 
before  daylight  except  by  sprinting,  I  set 
forth  from  Jerusalem.  There  was  no  watch¬ 
man  upon  the  walls  impatiently  waiting  for 
the  signs  of  the  morning  and  the  relieving 
watch,  and  no  policeman  or  sentry  in  the 
street.  I  passed  in  silence  through  the 
Valley  of  Jehoshaphat,  but  the  day  of  de¬ 
cision  was  not  yet  come;  for  the  stars  had 
not  “  withdrawn  their  shining,”  and  the 
moon  was  not  yet  darkened,  and  the  brooks 
of  Judah  were  not  “flowing  with  waters.” 

It  was  not  until  I  reached  the  first  village 
on  the  left  that  I  again  came  upon  the 
ancient  travellers,  for  the  living  one  had 
not  yet  risen,  and  the  first  naturally  enough 

[132] 


TO  DAN 


was  David — David,  whom  I  had  seen  upon 
every  road  fleeing  from  Saul.  This  par¬ 
ticular  place  was  the  village  where  the 
priest,  Abimelech,  gave  him,  in  his  hunger, 
the  shewbread  from  the  altar,  and  the 
sword  of  Goliath  which  had  been  kept 
there  since  the  day  of  the  memorable  com¬ 
bat. 

It  was  a  little  way  beyond  here,  as  I  re¬ 
call,  near  Gibeah,  that  pilgrims  of  the  day, 
returning  to  their  homeland,  were  accus¬ 
tomed  to  look  back  toward  the  Holy  City 
and  cry: 

If  I  forget  thee,  O  Jerusalem,  let  my  right  hand 
forget  her  cunning.  If  I  do  not  remember  thee,  let 
my  tongue  cleave  to  the  roof  of  my  mouth;  if  I  pre¬ 
fer  not  Jerusalem  above  my  chief  Joy. 

But  Gibeah  is  not  a  place  of  agreeable 
associations  for  “ pilgrims  of  the  night/’ 
One  who  has  a  good  memory  of  the  Old 

[  133  1 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


Testament  added  to  a  lively  imagination 
would  find  it  a  gruesome  neighborhood. 
For  it  was  at  Gibeah  that  the  Levite,  when 
he  was  returning  to  Shechem  with  his  errant 
wife  from  Bethlehem- Judah,  whither  he 
had  gone  to  persuade  her  home,  was  set 
upon  by  “the  sons  of  Belial,”  and  so  vilely 
treated  as  to  his  wife  that  “no  such  deed 
was  done  or  seen  from  the  day  that  the 
Children  of  Israel  came  up  out  of  the  land 
of  Egypt”  till  that  day;  so  vilely  that  the 
Levite  “divided  her  together  with  her  bones 
into  twelve  pieces,  and  sent  her  into  all 
the  coasts  of  Israel  in  order  that  the  inhabi¬ 
tants  might  consider  it  and  take  advice”; 
so  vilely  that  Israel  did  come  together  as 
one  man,  “from  Dan  to  Beersheba,”  and 
not  only  spoke  their  minds  concerning  this 
“lewdness  and  folly,”  but  resolved  to  ex¬ 
terminate  the  evil-doers,  and  so  began  the 
Benjamite  war. 


[  134  ] 


TO  DAN 


And,  according  to  the  record,  there  were 
more  men  gathered  in  and  about  Gibeah  on 
that  day  than  there  were  British  and  Arabs, 
Turks  and  Germans,  all  told,  in  the  lines 
across  Palestine  the  night  of  my  journey — 
more  men,  indeed,  that  “drew  sword”  than 
there  are  inhabitants  in  all  Palestine  to¬ 
day.  And  such  deeds  were  done  in  a  day, 
it  is  interesting  to  note  in  passing,  when 
there  was  no  king  in  Israel,  and  when 
every  one  did  what  seemed  right  in  his  own 
eyes,  a  time  of  voluntary  enlistment  and 
of  theocratic  individualism. 

But  though  the  vanquished  Benjamites 
were  given  women  of  Jabesh-Gilead  for 
wives,  and  when  these  sufficed  them  not 
were  permitted  to  “catch  every  man  his 
wife  from  among  the  daughters  of  Shiloh 
when  they  came  out  to  dance  their  dances,” 
Gibeah,  that  afterward  became  the  capital 
of  Saul  when  Israel  insisted  upon  having  a 

[135] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


king,  has  become  a  deserted,  treeless  hill¬ 
top.  It  required  no  imagination  to  see 
Rizpah  standing  there  on  its  lonesome  crest, 
guarding  the  bodies  of  the  sons  of  Saul 
who  had  been  hanged  on  that  same  hill, 
“suffering  neither  the  birds  to  rest  upon 
them  by  day  nor  beasts  of  the  field  by 
night.” 

And  then  one  saw  dimly  the  hill  of  Ra- 
mah,  but  the  “sound  of  bitter  weeping” 
had  ceased.  They  who  had  been  refugees 
had  returned  again  “to  their  own  loved 
border.”  Indeed,  when  I  visited  the  vil¬ 
lage  by  day,  not  long  after,  with  those  of 
our  company  who  were  finding  water  for 
the  oxen  which  we  were  purchasing  to  let 
to  the  villagers  that  they  might  plough 
again  their  stony  fields,  a  little  child  was 
brought  out — the  pride  of  their  village — 
wearing  a  helmet-shaped  hat  covered  with 
coins,  as  is  the  custom  in  some  villages. 

[  136  ] 


TO  DAN 


And  with  the  child  the  medicine-woman  of 
the  village  (I  do  not  know  by  what  other 
name  to  call  her),  doubtless  practising  her 
art  much  as  did  the  ancient  witch  of  En- 
dor,  who  summoned  the  spirit  of  the 
prophet  Samuel  from  his  grave  on  that 
very  hill  to  confront  King  Saul  in  his  dis¬ 
tress  before  the  battle  of  Mount  Gilboa. 

One  would  have  to  spend  the  entire  day 
going  these  few  miles  to  Bireh,  the  village 
that  I  expected  to  reach  by  sunrise,  if  one 
stopped  to  parley  with  the  past,  for  every 
mile  of  the  way  is  populous  with  memo¬ 
ries.  it  is  the  very  particular  memory  of 
this  road,  which  one  must  pause  to  wel¬ 
come  in  one’s  thought  on  the  dusty  way, 
that  Joseph  and  Mary,  with  the  company 
of  their  kinsfolk,  when  returning  from  the 
Feast  of  the  Passover  in  Jerusalem  to  Gali¬ 
lee,  did  spend  a  whole  day  walking  these 
same  few  miles,  for  it  is  recorded  in  Luke 

[  137  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


that  they  “went  a  day’s  journey”  before 
they  missed  the  boy  Jesus;  and  the  tradi¬ 
tion  is  that  the  place  at  which  they  missed 
him  was  Bireh.  It  is  now  a  Moslem  vil¬ 
lage,  sitting  or  kneeling  on  the  eastern  slope 
of  the  watershed,  with  its  back  toward  the 
Christian  village  of  Ram-Allah,  a  village 
which  looks  off  toward  the  sea  and  the 
land  across  the  sea,  for  six  hundred  men 
have  gone  out  from  that  village  of  more 
than  three  thousand  people  to  America, 
and  it  was  reported  that  two  hundred  of 
these  had  entered  the  army.  Between  the 
two  villages  stands  the  school  established 
by  the  French.  One  does  not  have  to  go 
farther  to  know  why  so  many  men  of  that 
region  had  gone  out  to  the  land  of  those 
who  established  and  maintained  so  effi¬ 
ciently  this  school  on  the  hill. 

Bireh  was  the  ancient  Beeroth,  whose  in¬ 
habitants,  with  the  camouflage  of  mouldy 

[  138  ] 


TO  DAN 


bread  and  old  shoes  and  garments,  passed 
themselves  off  to  Joshua  as  pilgrims  from 
a  far  land,  and  so  persuaded  Joshua  to 
make  a  league  of  peace  with  them,  which 
he  did,  and  would  not  renounce  when  he 
found  that  he  had  been  deceived  by  the 
near  neighbors  of  those  whom  he  had  al¬ 
ready  conquered.  But  though  he  let  these 
dissimulating  slackers  live,  he  made  them 
in  punishment  “hewers  of  wood  and  draw¬ 
ers  of  water  unto  all  the  congregation”; 
and  the  dwellers  in  this  village  seemed  still 
to  be  of  that  great  multitude,  for  I  saw 
hundreds  of  them  on  their  way  to  labor  in 
laying  ties  for  the  railroad  and  in  making 
trenches  for  the  water-pipe,  both  of  which 
were  creeping  day  by  day  toward  the  front. 

Beyond  Bireh  the  main  road  leads  to 
Shechem,  the  road  which  the  Levite  must 
have  taken  with  his  dead  wife — a  road  now 
filled  with  ambulances  and  lorries  all  the 

[  139  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


day  long.  But  my  way  led  to  the  right, 
past  the  village  that  was  known  in  Abra¬ 
ham’s  time  as  “Luz,”  and  after  Jacob’s 
time  as  “Bethel.”  If  I  had  not  been 
under  orders  not  to  go  beyond  Bireh  before 
daylight,  I  should  have  tried  to  reach 
Bethel  in  the  night,  for  its  entrancing  mem¬ 
ory  is  of  the  night,  when  angels  descended 
and  ascended  the  golden  ladder  upon  its 
rocky  summit,  in  Jacob’s  dream.  But  by 
day  I  saw  the  terrestrial  instead  of  the 
celestial  inhabitants  of  Bireh,  and  they 
were  more  courteous  to  me  than  the  an¬ 
cient  inhabitants  were  to  the  prophet 
Elisha,  and  quite  as  hospitable  as  one  of 
their  ancient  citizens  was  to  another  itiner¬ 
ant  prophet,  who  was  so  overcome  by  their 
hospitality  as  to  disobey  the  orders  of 
Jehovah,  and  was  in  consequence  devoured 
by  a  lion  on  his  return  trip.  One  need  fear 
however,  neither  the  fate  of  those  who 

[  140  ] 


TO  DAN 


mocked  nor  of  him  who  was  too  good  a 
guest,  for  neither  bear  nor  lion  could  find 
range  among  those  hills  filled  with  soldiers, 
and  threaded  out  roads  and  paths  bearing 
loved  names  of  home  places  in  the  British 
Isles. 

Whenever  I  asked  the  way  to  my  “  ob¬ 
jective,”  the  answer  always  was,  “It  is 
the  hill  with  the  trees  on  it,”  for  all  the 
other  hills  were  bare;  baldness  had  come 
upon  them,  partly,  perhaps,  because  of  the 
ancient  pious  cutting  down  of  the  groves 
of  Baal  in  high  places,  but  largely  because 
of  the  wanton  and  greedy  destruction  by 
the  Turks.  Here  and  there  one  saw  a  hill¬ 
side  covered  with  olive-trees,  and  now  and 
then  one  saw  the  trees  climbing  even  to 
the  summits  of  these  little  hills,  an  intima¬ 
tion  of  the  verdure  and  fatness  that  might 
cover  all  the  hills.  But  like  the  trees  in 
the  ancient  fable — the  first  of  all  fables — 

[141] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


pronounced  by  Jotham,  not  fifty  miles  away 
— the  trees  of  the  land  had  chosen  the 
bramble  to  rule  over  them,  and  it  had  con¬ 
sumed  them,  even  to  the  cedars  of  Lebanon. 

I  found  no  pathway  to  the  summit  of 
Tel-Azur  from  the  main  road  along  which 
the  troops  were  passing  to  and  fro.  But 
when  I  reached  the  shade  of  the  summit 
trees  the  view  was  worth  all  the  effort  of 
the  climb.  I  could  “view  the  landscape 
o’er,”  as  did  Moses  from  Nebo,  which 
must  have  been  in  sight,  though  I  could 
not  identify  it.  I  could  see,  as  did  he, 
“the  land  of  Gilead  unto  Dan,”  and  the 
“land  of  Ephraim  and  of  Manasseh  and  of 
Judah,  unto  the  utmost  sea,”  and  the 
“plain  of  the  valley  of  Jericho.”  The  land 
to  the  north  lay  like  a  great,  peaceful  Vale 
of  Tempe,  filled  with  gray  and  brown  hills, 
with  no  sign,  visible  to  the  naked  eye,  of 
the  combat,  though  the  thunders  were  rum- 

[  142] 


TO  DAN 


bling  from  one  end  to  the  other  of  the  line. 
My  only  fear  was  that  I  should  have  to  go 
back  to  America  before  entrance  could  be 
had  to  this  “promised  land.” 

On  my  return  to  Jerusalem  the  Chief  of 
the  Occupied  Enemy  Territory  said  that 
they  must  manage  to  move  their  lines  far¬ 
ther  north  in  order  to  give  me  more  room 
for  exercise.  I  could  wish  that  this  motive 
had  some  part  in  impelling  the  “push”  or 
“drive”  of  the  mighty  advance  that  soon 
came  to  clear  the  way  through  Samaria  and 
Galilee  and  even  beyond  the  mountain  of 
Lebanon. 

On  the  night  of  the  18th  of  September  a 
corps  commander  who  had  joined  our  com¬ 
mission  and  a  few  distinguished  guests  at 
a  dinner  in  honor  of  our  American  repre¬ 
sentative  in  the  mixed  court  in  Egypt  (the 
night  of  the  arrival  of  the  quail  from  the 
desert  near  Gaza)  said  to  me,  quietly  and 

[  143] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


aside  as  he  entered,  that  he  would  have  to 
ask  to  be  excused  early,  as  the  “drive” 
was  on.  I  marvelled  at  the  placidity  of 
the  general,  who  made  no  further  reference 
to  the  world-startling  event  that  was  just 
beginning  (except  to  remark  as  he  looked 
at  his  wrist  that  the  first  movement  was 
being  at  that  moment  made  by  his  men), 
but  took  an  interested  part  in  the  discus¬ 
sions  of  the  evening,  and  then  drove  back 
to  his  headquarters  on  the  Mount  of  Olives, 
and  started  off  in  the  night  toward  the 
front. 

After  the  guests  had  gone  I  followed  the 
General  up  the  Mount,  past  the  white 
graveyard  of  the  soldiers,  whiter  than  ever 
in  the  full  moonlight,  to  the  monastery 
which  was  awake  with  the  bustle  of  the  de¬ 
parting  troops  that  had  been  sitting  out¬ 
side  its  walls  for  weeks  awaiting  this  night. 
There  was  little  sleep  on  the  Mount  that 

[  144  ] 


TO  DAN 


night,  and  when  dawn  came  I  found  the 
priests  walking  back  and  forth  beneath  the 
olive-trees,  looking  off  toward  the  north, 
as  if  the  Day  of  Judgment  had  at  last  come 
over  the  Vale  of  Jehoshaphat,  across  which 
the  thunders  were  rumbling. 

The  battle  begun  that  night  is  undoubt¬ 
edly  the  most  memorable,  the  most  impor¬ 
tant,  and  the  most  spectacular  of  all  the 
battles  of  all  the  centuries  in  that  little 
land.  As  a  battle  it  was,  as  I  have  quoted 
a  critic  in  saying,  “a  battle  without  a  to¬ 
morrow”  in  its  complete  success,  “a  battle 
of  dreams”  in  the  accurate  response  by 
every  part  of  this  complex  machine,  despite 
the  fact  that  there  was  so  much  of  the 
human  in  it.  And  to  crown  it  all,  it  was 
carried  on  against  the  richest  historical 
background  in  all  the  earth. 

It  was  the  next  morning  after  the  day  of 
,  this  glorious  dawn  that  I  drove,  in  the 

[  145  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


early  hours,  across  the  hills  and  down  upon 
the  plain  to  General  Headquarters,  where  I 
found  the  Commander-in-Chief  as  imper¬ 
turbable  in  the  midst  of  this  “battle  of 
Armageddon”  that  was  in  its  drive  to  pierce 
the  Berlin-Bagdad  backbone  of  the  Teuton 
beast  and  bring  the  collapse  of  Turkey,  as 
calm  and  imperturbable  as  if  he  had  no 
thought  for  the  day  except  the  reviewing 
of  the  Red  Cross  work  in  Jerusalem,  which 
had  been  planned  for  that  very  afternoon. 
Victory  was  on  his  horizon,  but  he  was  as 
imperturbed  as  were  the  people  when  I 
passed  through  England  just  after  the  cap¬ 
ture  of  Kemmel  Hill  by  the  Germans. 
There  was  no  sign  of  flurry  nor  fever  of 
excitement.  When  back  in  Jerusalem  that 
night  or  perhaps  the  next,  the  report  of  the 
capture  of  the  first  ten  thousand  prisoners 
was  received,  all  that  any  one  said  was  that 
“it  was  a  good  show”;  and  the  Military 

[  146  ] 


TO  DAN 


Governor  of  Jerusalem  went  on  with  the 
organization  of  his  intercommunity  chess 
club. 

It  was  not  many  mornings  later  that  the 
Commander-in-Chief  sent  a  message  by 
telephone  to  my  office  that  if  I  would  re¬ 
main  in  Palestine  a  few  days  longer  I  might 
find  it  possible  to  walk  to  Dan.  It  was  evi¬ 
dently  his  own  personal  suggestion  which 
had  later  confirmation  in  a  message  by  let¬ 
ter,  a  bit  more  cautious,  intimating  that 
for  the  present  one  might  not  be  able  to 
go  beyond  Lake  Huleh,  the  “waters  of 
Merom.”  This  was  enough  to  start  me 
out  on  my  journey  toward  Dan  before 
nightfall,  for  the  tribe  of  Dan  dwelt  close 
upon  the  further  shores  of  Lake  Huleh. 

At  dusk  I  was  passing  through  “No 
Man’s  Land,”  between  the  lines  of  the  old 
and  now  abandoned  trenches  and  the  maze 
of  wire  entanglements,  for  “No  Man’s 

[147] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


Land”  stretched  into  Asia,  and  trenches 
were  in  the  land  of  Benjamin  as  in  the  days 
of  David.  I  was  actually  on  the  way  to 
Galilee. 

The  roads  were  not  such  as  I  had  found 
back  of  the  old  lines,  when  I  had  walked 
from  Jaffa  to  Jericho,  or  from  Beersheba  to 
Bireh  and  Bethel,  and  I  had  rough  going  in 
the  starlit  darkness.  Besides  the  stones 
over  which  I  stumbled  and  the  ruts  into 
which  I  fell,  there  were  shell-holes  now  and 
then  and  blasted  bridges,  but  to  be  walking 
with  my  own  feet  on  the  now  free  soil  in 
the  van  of  the  new  millions  of  pilgrims  was 
an  ecstasy  that  made  me  oblivious  of  the 
harshness  of  the  roads.  If  it  had  been  a 
condition  of  my  going  that  I  should  walk 
barefooted  I  should  have  been  ready  to 
take  off  my  shoes  as  on  holy  ground,  for 
the  Master  of  Men  had  walked  these  same 
paths. 


(  148] 


TO  DAN 


When,  after  a  winding  ascent  over  a  high 
ridge  in  Ephraim  and  a  winding  descent 
into  the  valley  of  Samaria  beyond  (for  one 
“must  needs  pass  through  Samaria”),  I 
found  myself  still  a  few  miles  from  the  well 
of  Sychar  and  my  “pilgrim’s  bottle”  nearly 
empty,  I  happened  upon  three  “Tommies” 
at  the  roadside,  and  asked  them  where  I 
could  get  water.  They  pointed  to  lights 
farther  down  the  valley.  I  asked  what  the 
place  was  and  they  answered:  “The  camp 
of  the  First  Irish  Regiment.”  An  Irish 
regiment  in  the  heart  of  Palestine !  But  it 
is  only  characteristic  of  these  Irish  fellows 
that  they  should  have  gotten  to  the  heart 
of  what  they  set  out  for;  and  it  had  been 
valiant  going  and  brave  fighting  that  had 
won  this  place  for  them  in  the  midst  of  the 
Holy  Land.  One  of  the  “Tommies”  offered 
to  accompany  me  down  into  the  camp,  and 
led  me  through  a  bypath  to  the  place  where 

[  149  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


the  water  cans,  brought  in  by  the  camels 
during  the  day,  were  in  charge  of  a  fine 
strip  of  an  Irish  lad.  He  was  lying  in  his 
tent  reading  by  candle-light,  but  got  up  at 
once  to  give  me  a  drink  and  fill  my  water- 
bottle.  As  he  was  pouring  out  the  warm¬ 
ish  water  I  said  to  him:  “And  from  what 
part  of  Ireland  do  you  come?”  “Ah,”  he 
said,  “I  come  from  Tipperary,  sir.”  I 
looked  up  at  the  portentous  mountains  of 
Ebal  and  Gerizim,  dimly  visible  not  far 
away,  the  mountains  on  which  the  children 
of  Israel  stood  three  thousand  years  or 
more  ago,  and  shouted  across  the  interven¬ 
ing  valley  their  “Amens”  in  the  mightiest 
antiphonal  out-of-door  service  ever  held, 
perhaps,  the  service  of  the  Blessing  and 
the  Curse,  ending  with  the  imprecation : 
“Cursed  be  he  that  confirmeth  not  the 
words  of  this  law  to  do  them.”  I  looked 
up  at  these  fateful  mountains  and  I  said: 

[150] 


TO  DAN 


“Well,  my  lad,  you  are,  indeed,  a  long,  long 
way  from  home.” 

When,  an  hour  or  two  later,  I  passed 
alone  through  the  august  portal  made  by 
these  mountains,  where  only  a  few  days 
before  another  mighty  antiphonal  service 
had  been  held — the  guns  of  the  Turks  and 
Germans  on  one  side  and  of  the  British  on 
the  other — I  said  to  myself,  as  I  had  said 
to  the  Irish  lad:  “You  are  indeed  a  long, 
long  way  from  home.”  And  yet  I  was  in 
the  very  homestead  of  America — the  Amer¬ 
ica  that  has  written  on  its  coins  its  trust 
in  the  God  to  whom  Joshua  built  an  altar 
“in  Mount  Ebal,”  and  has  dated  them  from 
the  birth  of  Him  who  “wearied  with  his 
journey”  sat  by  the  well  on  this  same 
mountainside,  and  said  to  her  who  gave 
him  to  drink:  “Neither  in  this  mountain 
[alone]  nor  in  Jerusalem  shall  ye  worship 
the  Father.” 


[151] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


Sir  George  Adam  Smith,  in  his  geographi¬ 
cal  epic,  describes  the  panorama  of  all  Pal¬ 
estine  to  be  seen  from  the  summit  of  Mount 
Ebal.  But  within  the  horizon  of  the  spiri¬ 
tual  utterance  made  at  the  foot  of  this 
same  mountain  even  the  farthest  lands  of 
Christendom  are  visible. 

Shechem,  just  beyond  the  grim  portal 
(the  city,  no  doubt,  to  which  the  disciples 
went  to  buy  food  while  their  Master  waited 
for  them  at  the  well),  was  sound  asleep 
that  night  after  the  months  of  wakeful 
nights  of  warfare  at  her  gates — Shechem, 
that  has  taken  the  name  Nablus,  but  has 
not,  apparently,  made  full  atonement  for 
the  wickedness  of  those  “vain  and  light 
fellows”  of  ancient  Shechem,  who  for  three¬ 
score  and  ten  pieces  of  silver  slew  three¬ 
score  and  ten  sons  of  Gideon  on  the  same 
stone  (in  order  to  have  a  monarchy  instead 
of  an  oligarchy) ;  for  the  curse  of  the  tyran- 

t  152] 


TO  DAN 


nical,  bloody  Ottoman  bramble”  had  been 
upon  it  almost  to  that  very  midnight  hour. 
It  is  remembered,  however,  that  the  Master 
abode  there  two  days,  and,  I  doubt  not, 
his  spirit  will  find  welcome  there  once  more 
now  that  Allenby  has  torn  the  bramble  up 
by  its  roots. 

I  could  not  find  the  path  over  the  hill  to 
the  site  of  the  ancient  capital  of  Israel, 
where  stood  the  “ivory  house”  that  Ahab 
built  along  with  altars  to  Baal,  so  I  followed 
the  road,  deep  with  dust,  around  the  foot 
of  the  commanding  high  place,  and  on  to 
Jenin,  near  Jezreel.  It  is  written  that 
when  Ben  Hadad,  King  of  Syria,  was  be¬ 
sieging  this  city  of  Samaria,  he  was  “drink¬ 
ing  himself  drunk  in  his  pavilions,  he  and 
the  thirty-two  kings  that  helped  him.” 
And  this  must  have  been  the  occupation  of 
the  German  officers  in  this  same  region  last 
year,  for  when  I  entered  the  house  assigned 

[153] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


to  our  medical  section  which  we  installed 
that  day  at  Jenin,  a  house  hastily  vacated 
but  a  few  days  before  by  German  officers 
there  were  enough  empty  champagne  and 
other  wine  bottles  lying  about  to  have 
made  Ben  Hadad  and  his  thirty-two  com¬ 
panion  kings  drunk  in  their  emptying. 
How  Ben  Hadad  in  his  condition  “escaped 
on  a  horse,”  in  the  general  slaughter,  is  not 
easily  understood.  Some  of  the  German 
officers  high  in  command  of  the  Turks  had 
the  same  narrow  escape.  Of  the  captured 
German  under-officers  and  Turkish  soldiers 
(of  whom  I  met  thirty-five  hundred  in  the 
road  just  outside  of  Jenin)  the  Germans 
seemed  well  fed,  but  the  Turks  ragged, 
spiritless,  and  undernourished. 

But  in  the  very  early  morning,  long  be¬ 
fore  I  reached  Jenin,  I  passed  across  a  plain 
which  is  in  the  remembered  background  of 
millions,  even  if  its  name  has  been  forgot- 

[154] 


TO  DAN 


ten  by  many  of  them — the  plain  of  Dothan, 
where  Joseph,  “the  dreamer,”  found  his 
brethren  feeding  their  father’s  flock  and 
where  he  was  put  into  a  pit  and  later  sold 
to  the  passing  Ishmaelites.  He  had  come 
all  the  way  from  Hebron,  expecting  to  find 
his  brothers  in  Shechem,  but  had  had  to 
travel  three  miles  farther,  and  perhaps  a 
hundred  in  all,  before  he  was  seen  “afar 
off”  by  his  envious  brothers,  coming  across 
this  plain,  where  I,  three  thousand  years 
later,  happened  upon  a  shepherd,  in  the 
same  costume,  no  doubt,  as  that  of  Jacob’s 
sons,  leading  his  flock  to  the  same  pas¬ 
tures — for  all  these  tens  of  centuries  shep¬ 
herds  have  been  saying:  “Let  us  go  to 
Dothan.” 

Here  it  was,  too,  that  the  chariots  of  fire 
appeared  on  the  mountain,  at  the  edge  of 
the  plain,  “round  about  Elisha.”  The 
chariot  had  but  recently  passed  that  way 

[  155] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


again,  and  victoriously  (as  the  “padre”  of 
the  Black  Watch  had  confidently  prophe¬ 
sied),  and  the  road  was  filled  with  the 
wreckage  of  the  fires  they  had  dropped 
from  the  skies. 

Not  a  hundred  yards  from  one  of  these 
wrecks  of  a  lorry  of  the  most  efficient  and 
expensive  type,  bearing  the  German  eagle 
upon  it,  I  saw  a  native  villager  in  the  field, 
beginning  to  plough  again,  now  that  peace 
had  come  in  the  wake  of  these  chariots  of 
fire,  but  with  a  plough  that  was  at  least 
two  thousand  years  behind  the  lorry  in  its 
mechanism — which  led  to  a  meditation,  in 
that  Samaritan  dawn,  on  Christendom’s 
letting  the  home-farm  get  on  for  centuries 
with  agricultural  implements  of  the  most 
primitive  type  while  sending  into  it  within 
a  few  years  tens  of  thousands  of  lorries, 
machine-guns,  cannon,  and  aeroplanes  of 
the  world’s  destructive  genius,  and  with- 

[156] 


Abandoned  German  lorry  on  hill  just  outside  of  Nazareth. 


TO  DAN 


holding  good  seed  from  the  sowing  of  its 
fields  while  sending  tons  of  ammunition  to 
plant  in  them  and  in  deeper  furrows  than 
the  peasant  could  turn  with  his  scratching 
plough. 

In  Jenin,  where  I  spent  the  day,  I  saw 
the  British  bringing  order  out  of  the  Turk¬ 
ish  chaos  and  German  wantonness,  feeding 
the  prisoners  of  war,  caring  for  their  sick, 
burying  their  dead,  cleansing  the  streets 
and  purifying  the  waters.  I  saw,  too,  our 
own  American  Red  Cross  medical  section 
installed  in  the  house  of  German  gluttony, 
with  nothing  left  in  it  except  the  empty 
bottles  and  the  German  inscriptions  on  the 
walls.  Then  I  slept  for  a  part  of  the  night 
on  an  improvised  cot  (thanks  to  the  doc¬ 
tor)  in  one  of  the  bare  rooms,  and,  rising  at 
two  o’clock  in  the  morning,  found  my  way 
down  through  the  rough  and  narrow  streets 
of  the  sleeping  town  and,  without  challenge 

[157] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


by  the  drowsy  Indian  guards,  out  upon  the 
plain  of  Esdraelon. 

Two  journeys  of  the  scores  that  I  have 
made  on  foot  will  always  be  put  above  all 
others:  One,  the  journey  of  forty  miles, 
from  near  Amiens  to  Dieppe,  the  night  of 
the  day  on  which  the  formal  declaration  of 
war  was  made  by  Great  Britain  (August  4, 
1914),  the  night  out  of  which  I  walked  into 
the  dawn  of  the  day  that  woke  all  Europe 
to  war;  the  other  this  journey  across  the 
plain  of  Esdraelon  or  Armageddon,  in  the 
night  out  of  which  I  walked  into  the  dawn 
of  the  Holy  Land  peace. 

Of  this  journey  I  have  written  in  the 
lines  which  follow  this  chapter,  but  even 
they  fail  to  tell  of  the  exalting  experiences 
of  that  miracled  night  and,  to  me,  ever- 
memorable  morning  in  which  I  entered 
Nazareth — “Christ’s  home  town,”  some 
Western  paper  is  said  to  have  called  it, 
when  announcing  in  great  head -lines  Gen- 

[158] 


Carpenter  and  boy  in  Nazareth. 


TO  DAN 


eral  Allenby’s  taking  of  the  little  city.  Ir¬ 
reverent  this  way  of  putting  it  seemed  at 
first,  but  after  all  it  stated,  and  in  a  homely, 
simple  language  that  we  use  in  our  daily 
life  (especially  in  these  days  of  our  return¬ 
ing  boys)  the  essential  fact  which  makes 
that  city  dear  to  the  world.  And  it  is 
here,  as  Renan  has  said,  that  the  memorials 
of  Christendom  should  rise  rather  than  at 
Jerusalem,  where  Christ  died,  or  even  Beth¬ 
lehem,  where  He  was  born,  for  here  He 
lived  through  his  childhood  and  youth  and 
into  manhood. 

I  shall  ever  consider  it  the  greatest  privi¬ 
lege  and  honor  of  my  life  that  I  was  per¬ 
mitted,  first  of  Americans — after  the  Army 
of  Occupation  and  its  attaches — and  first 
of  pilgrims  on  foot  to  enter  this  “home 
town”  of  the  Christian  world  in  this  new 
epoch  and  to  enter  it  wearing  the  sign  of 
humanity’s  brotherhood,  the  Red  Cross. 

I  shall  leave  the  readers  to  find  their 

[  150] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


several  ways  through  the  steep  and  narrow 
streets  (but  if  one  desired  a  guide  I  should 
suggest  Doctor  Scrimgeour,  of  Edinburgh, 
who  maintained  a  hospital  there  before  the 
war,  and  who  went  back  with  me  to  it  on 
another  journey,  for  he  knows  every  foot 
of  Nazareth  and  has  written  of  it;  one’s 
progress  would,  however,  be  slow,  for  the 
people  would  flock  about  their  doctor, 
whom  they  all  loved,  Moslem  and  Chris¬ 
tian  alike).  For  myself,  I  asked  a  lad  of 
beautiful  face — such  as  the  Master  must 
have  had — to  show  me  the  way  to  the 
Church  of  the  Annunciation,  where  I  found 
an  English-speaking  Franciscan  brother. 
He  was  in  a  grotto  back  of  the  chapel  mak¬ 
ing  wafers  (with  the  imprint  of  Christ’s 
form  upon  them)  for  the  altar.  I  was 
hungry  enough  to  ask,  as  David  did,  for 
the  very  shewbread  from  the  altar,  but 
the  brothers  offered  to  share  with  me  their 

[160] 


Franciscan  brother  (Sebastian)  in  a  grotto  back  of  the  Church  of  the  Annunciation  in  Nazareth, 

making  altar  wafers  just  after  the  occupation. 


I 


TO  DAN 

own  ration  of  burnt-barley  coffee  and  black 
bread.  I  wrote  many  years  ago  a  tribute 
to  a  brother  of  Saint  Francis,  which  I  can 
now  repeat  with  a  deeper  sense  of  brother¬ 
hood: 

“Priest  of  the  white  cord,  thou  and  I 
Are  brothers,  though  my  prayers  I  cry 
Uncassocked,  and  ’neath  fiercer  sky 
Than  daily  bends  o’er  thee.” 

When  I  gave  this  chapter  the  title  “To 
Dan,”  I  hoped  to  reach  Dan  at  the  end  of 
it.  But  I  have  met  so  many  Biblical  and 
other  friends  on  the  road  that  I  have  still 
many  miles  to  go.  Moreover,  not  far  be¬ 
yond  Nazareth,  in  Galilee,  I  was  unexpect¬ 
edly  caught  up  into  a  modern  “chariot” 
and  carried  over  Jordan  and  far  beyond 
Dan.  If  the  reader  is  willing  to  leave  Naz¬ 
areth  (though  for  my  part  I  cannot  urge 
his  going  farther),  I  can  promise  him  that 

[161] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


I  will  bring  him  back  from  beyond  Jordan 
and  not  leave  him  as  Elijah  left  Elisha, 
gazing  at  a  receding  whirlwind  of  dust  in 
the  land  of  Gilead  or  Moab. 


[  162] 


XI 


ARMAGEDDON 

(Early  in  the  morning  of  the  20th  of  September,  while  I  was 
at  the  General  Headquarters  of  the  army  in  Palestine,  the 
Commander-in-Chief,  General  Sir  Edmund  Allenby,  coming 
from  the  map-room,  remarked,  as  accurately  as  I  can  recall 
his  language:  “I  have  just  had  word  that  my  cavalry  are  at 
Armageddon.  The  Battle  of  Armageddon  is  on.”  I  do  not 
hold  him  responsible  for  the  following  exegesis  of  the  chapter 
in  the  Book  of  Revelation,  but,  looking  back  upon  that  day, 
I  can  but  think  that  this  was  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the 
battle  with  the  Beast.) 

I’VE  seen  the  Angel  pour  the  sixth  gold 
bowl 

Off  toward  the  great  Euphrates,  and 
I’ve  seen 

The  unclean  spirits  issue  from  the  Beast, 
The  Dragon  and  the  mouth  of  him  who 
posed 

As  Prophet — they  who’ve  led  the  whole 
wide  world 


[163] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


“Together  to  the  war  of  the  Great  Day”; 

For  I  have  been  in  Armageddon’s  vale, 

The  Judgment  Place,  which  John  of  Pat- 
mos  saw 

In  his  Apocalypse.  There  have  I  walked; 

There  seen  the  Dragon’s  bayonetted  tongue; 

There  gotten  this  Beast  blood-splotch  on 
my  boot; 

There  heard  the  Teuton-Baal  Prophet  cry 

His  blasphemy  to  stir  a  Holy  War; 

There  seen  the  Allied  Men  on  horses  ride 

Guided  by  4 'eyes  that  were  as  flame  of 
fire”— 

Swift  as  these  flaming  eagles  did  they  ride; 

Swifter  than  Barak  from  Mount  Tabor’s 
slopes 

Rushing  upon  this  plain;  swifter  than  they 

Of  Gideon’s  band  who  swept  upon  Jezreel 

From  Mount  Gilboa  fronting  this  dread 
field, 

Where  kings  and  emperors  through  cen¬ 
turies 


[  164  ] 


ARMAGEDDON 


Have  perished  since  the  dewless,  rainless 
days 

When  these  same  circling  mountains 
mourned  for  Saul 

And  Jonathan,  whom  death  could  not 
divide. 

Stronger  than  lions  of  the  wilderness 
Were  they,  these  sons  of  lions  of  the  isles, 
Smiting  with  all  the  righteous  wrath  of 
God, 

Striking  with  all  the  summoned  might  of 
right. 

•  •••••a* 

And  after  this  sixth  Angel  had  passed  on, 
On  over  Jordan  to  the  desert’s  edge, 

And  still  beyond  to  Bagdad’s  blistered 
roofs, 

Till  all  the  blazing  lava  had  been  poured, 
And  Prophet,  Dragon,  Beast  were  taken  all, 
I  saw  another  “standing  in  the  sun” 

At  setting  over  Armageddon’s  vale, 

Calling  “the  birds  that  in  mid-heaven  fly” 

[  165] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


To  come  together  to  the  supper  spread. 
The  great,  grim  supper  of  the  Mighty  God, 
Out  on  the  plain  from  Kishon  to  Beisan, 
Where  there  was  neither  cloth,  nor  flower, 
nor  lamp, 

Nor  plate,  nor  knife — only  the  pecking  beak 

And  tearing  claw  and  hov’ring  sable  wing. 
•  ••••••• 

That  night  I  walked  all  night  upon  the  plain 
Whose  loam  was  soft  and  grateful  to  my 
feet 

Sore  from  the  harshness  of  Samaria’s  hills — 
Soft  as  the  loam  of  that  far  prairie  farm 
I  ploughed  long,  long  ago;  and  black  as 
that, 

But  black  with  tinge  of  crimson  from  the 
hills. 

All  night  I  walked  alone,  save  for  the  dead 
Begging  for  burial — these  and  the  gulping 
birds. 

No  sound  was  there  except  of  my  own  steps, 

[166] 


ARMAGEDDON 


Or  now  and  then  the  scratching  at  my  knees 
Of  brambles  of  Abimelech’s  ill  rule, 

Or  braying  of  the  beast  of  Issachar 
Between  the  sheepfolds,  couching  at  his 
ease; 

For  dumbing  death  had  stalked  ahead  of  me. 
•  •••  •••• 

Then  toward  the  dawn  there  shone  a  won¬ 
drous  sign, 

Such  as  Sir  Bedivere  when  Arthur  died 
Beheld.  From  out  Gilboa’s  rugged  side 
(Where  Gideon  had  cried,  “Jehovah’s 
sword,” 

And  put  to  flight  the  hosts  of  Midian, 

And  Saul  had  seen  the  gleaming  scimitar 
The  Witch  of  Endor’s  presage  of  his  fate) 
Was  thrust  what  seemed  a  crescent  Dam¬ 
ask  sword 

The  color  of  dried  blood  upon  a  blade; 
Slowly,  as  slowly  as  a  rising  star, 

’Twas  lifted  upward  by  an  unseen  hand 

[167] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


Until  the  coming  of  the  morning  light 
Did  hide  it  in  a  jewelled  sheath  as  rich 
And  brilliant  as  an  Arab  ever  wore. 

I  knew  it  was  the  dying,  horned  moon; 
But  had  a  sword  been  hanging  in  the  sky, 
’Twere  not  more  like  a  sword  than  this  red 
moon 

That  shone  in  symbol  of  its  drawing  forth 
And  then  its  sheathing  in  the  new  Earth- 
Peace. 

There  were  the  hideous  wreckages  of  war, 
There  things  lay  stark  that  yesterday  were 
men; 

Naught  else  to  tell  that  Armageddon’s  day 
Had  come — had  come  and  gone ! 

And  now  there  stood, 

In  clear  command  of  all  the  placid  plain, 
The  Mount  on  which  He’d  taught  the  world 
to  pray, 

And  where  He’d  breathed  into  immortal  life 

[168] 


ARMAGEDDON 


The  words  of  His  divine  Beatitudes, 
Blessing  those  valiant  ones  who’d  fought 
for  peace 

And  now  were  called  by  Him  the  “Sons  of 
God.” 

•  ••••••• 

Pausing  to  look  at  this  e’er-haloed  height, 
I  heard  the  sound  of  sacramental  bells, 

Or  so  they  seemed,  but  were  the  desert 
chimes, 

Borne  by  the  camels  of  a  caravan 
Bringing  the  answer  of  the  Tabor  prayer 
To  those  who  prayed:  “Give  us  our  daily 
bread.” 

Across  my  pathway  to  the  Nazareth 
That  was  the  village  of  the  Prince  of  Peace 
They  passed. 

The  “thousand  years”  had  been  begun. 


[169] 


XII 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


BEYOND  Jordan”  has  in  it  a  sug¬ 
gestion  to  the  imagination  of  dis¬ 
tance — of  infinite  distance.  Even 
when  I  came  to  see,  morning  after  morning, 
from  the  Mount  of  Olives,  the  mountains 
of  Moab  or  Gilead  beyond  the  Jordan  and 
to  know  that  they  were  only  twenty  or 
thirty  miles  away,  they  still  kept  their  dis¬ 
tance,  with  their  mystery  as  of  infinity. 

I  remember,  as  with  the  memory  of  an 
apocalypse,  these  mountains  once  when 
they  had  all  the  semblance  of  celestial  hills. 
I  had  gone  with  the  Governor  of  Jerusalem 
to  see  the  workrooms  of  the  Russian  pil¬ 
grims  in  the  cloistered  stone  buildings  that 
stood  on  the  precipitous  southeastern  cliff  of 

[170] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


the  Mount  of  Olives.  There  we  found  these 
pilgrim  women  (who  had  been  stranded  in 
Jerusalem  by  the  war)  knitting,  sewing, 
spinning  in  the  long,  bare,  clean  rooms  of 
the  one-time  convent.  Without  stopping 
their  work,  they  rose  to  sing  their  home 
church-songs,  of  moving  pathos,  and  with 
such  wonderful  richness  and  range  of  voice 
that  one  could  have  easily  believed  them 
to  be  a  choir  celestial  in  the  New  Jerusalem, 
if  one  had  not  in  the  pianissimo  passages 
heard  the  clicking  of  their  terrestrial  knit¬ 
ting-needles.  Out  through  the  narrow  and 
low,  deep-set  windows  I  could  see  the 
mountains  beyond  Jordan  in  the  late  after¬ 
noon  light.  The  infinite  was  upon  the  very 
near  horizon  of  these  very  humble  human 
tasks,  for  which  the  American  Red  Cross 
was  incidentally  furnishing  the  material  to 
these  grateful  women. 

Out  on  the  prairies  of  Illinois  one  had 

[171] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


long  ago,  before  the  village  or  the  city 
grew  upon  one’s  horizon,  the  sense  of  in¬ 
finity,  but  at  great  distances.  Here  one 
had  the  feeling  that  eternity  was  looking 
in  at  the  windows  from  across  the  ascetic 
and  austere  Judsean  hills  and  over  the  kindly 
roofs  of  Bethany. 

Almost  anywhere  in  Palestine  one  has 
but  to  climb  to  a  hilltop  in  order  to  see 
beyond  Jordan  (and  most  of  the  villages, 
for  one  reason  or  another,  and  this  may 
have  been  one  of  them,  climbed  long  ago 
to  the  hilltops  or  far  up  the  hillsides  and 
have  continued  to  sit  there).  I  have  won¬ 
dered  whether  the  physical  fact  of  living 
constantly  in  the  presence  of  these  mystical 
mountains  and  looking  out  upon  them  from 
the  housetops  did  not  in  turn  furnish  one 
of  the  reasons  for  the  rise  of  so  many  of 
the  world’s  greatest  prophets  and  religious 
teachers  in  that  little  area  between  these 

[  172  ] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


mountains  and  the  sea,  the  “hinter-sea,”  as 
Moses  called  it,  which  was  for  the  inhabi¬ 
tants  ever  at  their  backs  and  seldom  before 
their  faces;  for  it  was  to  the  hills  that  they 
looked — to  the  mountains  round  about, 
upon  which  the  angels  of  the  Infinite  One 
came  down  and  walked  as  with  beautiful 
feet  even  into  their  fields  and  streets  and 
to  the  very  doors  of  their  tents. 

It  was,  historically,  in  a  valley  just  be¬ 
yond  Jordan  or  the  Dead  Sea,  into  whose 
never-overflowing  laver  the  Jordan  is  con¬ 
tinually  pouring  itself,  that  Moses  was 
buried,  though  “no  man  knoweth  his  sepul¬ 
chre  unto  this  day,”  for  God  “buried  also 
his  grave.”  It  was  just  beyond  Jordan 
that  the  prophet  Elijah  was  caught  up  by 
a  whirlwind  into  heaven,”  and  was  not 
found,  though  “fifty  strong  men”  searched 
for  him  three  days,  thinking  that,  perad- 
venture,  he  had  been  cast  “upon  some 

[  173  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


mountain  or  into  some  valley.”  It  was 
over  these  same  mountains,  though  per¬ 
haps  farther  to  the  south,  that  the  prophet 
Isaiah  in  his  august  imagery  saw  one  com¬ 
ing  “with  crimsoned  garments  from  Bos- 
rah.”  It  was  doubtless  the  heavens  above 
them  that  were,  in  the  Psalmist’s  glowing 
figure,  the  tabernacle  from  which  the  sun 
rose  as  a  bridegroom  prepared  for  his  day’s 
journey  across  the  land.  But  some  Hebrew 
poet  must  have  thought  of  the  long,  1owt 
mountains  themselves,  when  seen  in  their 
mingled  colors  shining  like  a  veil  or  curtain 
stretched  across  the  east,  as  the  Tabernacle 
of  the  wilderness,  for  so  they  seemed  to 
me  many  a  morning,  especially  when  a 
cloud  hung  over  them  as  over  the  “Tent 
of  Meeting,”  when  the  children  of  Israel 
were  still  wandering  in  the  desert  upon 
which  Pisgah  looked  down  in  the  land  of 
Moab. 


[174] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


I  was  reluctant  to  go  out  into  that  region ; 
not  for  the  reason  that  the  orthodox  Jew 
fears  to  enter  the  Temple  area  in  Jerusa¬ 
lem,  lest  he  should  walk  upon  the  site  of 
the  Holy  of  Holies;  but  lest  I  should  not, 
after  all,  find  the  Holy  of  Holies  out  there 
beneath  the  morning  cloud  or  where  I  had 
often  seen  the  mysterious  moving  lights  by 
night  as  of  “pillars  of  fire.” 

But,  after  weeks,  I  did  at  last  venture  to 
the  edge  of  the  outer  court  of  the  Wilder¬ 
ness  Tabernacle,  to  the  sand-dunes  of  the 
Jordan  Valley  that  stood  in  the  moonlight 
like  golden  boards  which  Bezalel  and  Oho- 
liab  had  fashioned  for  the  ancient  taber¬ 
nacle  described  in  the  Book  of  the  Exodus 
(even  to  the  “crown  of  gold  round  about,” 
for  there  was  a  cornice,  carved  by  the  wind 
and  the  water,  as  perfect  as  could  be 
wrought  by  “wise-hearted”  workmen).  I 
had  gone  with  two  American  Red  Cross 

[175] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


men  in  a  Ford  truck  down  to  Jericho  in 
the  evening  to  carry  a  hospital  outfit  to  an 
Anzac  clearing -station  out  on  the  plain  be¬ 
neath  the  “ Mount  of  Temptation.”  After 
delivering  our  ominous  load — ominous  of 
the  advance  in  which  there  would  probably 
be  need  of  these  appliances — we  went  into 
the  city  of  Jericho  (a  squalid  hell  by  day 
at  that  season  of  the  year  and  a  jasper 
heaven  by  night),  and  there  left  our  truck 
as  a  cot  for  our  Red  Cross  driver  (and  some 
day  I  hope  a  poet  or  prophet  will  preserve 
in  immortal  letters  liim  and  such  as  him 
and  his  Ford  car  and  such  as  his  car,  which 
ploughing  through  the  sands  of  the  desert 
made  possible  the  new  conquest  of  Canaan) . 
With  the  other  of  the  two,  an  electrical 
engineer  and  aviator,  who  if  summoned 
would  not  have  hesitated  to  accompany 
Elijah  in  his  chariot  of  fire,  we  went  in 
search  of  the  river,  the  river  that  runs 

[  176  ] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


somewhere  in  the  physical  geography  of 
everybody,  and  that  runs  in  the  spiritual 
geography  of  many,  between  life  and  death. 

Not  a  human  being  did  we  meet  or  see 
as  we  passed,  like  Virgil  and  Dante,  through 
the  weird  night  landscape.  Down,  circle 
below  circle,  through  the  ghostly  canyons 
we  went.  The  inferno  was  having  its  mid¬ 
night  siesta.  In  one  of  these  sand-canyons 
we  came  upon  a  cavalry  camp,  or  so  it 
seemed,  horses,  tents,  and  all;  but,  as  we 
soon  found,  absolutely  lifeless,  pure  ca¬ 
mouflage.  The  horses,  I  may  reveal,  now 
that  the  war  is  over,  were  of  the  same  ma¬ 
terial  as  the  famous  Trojan  horse,  but  with 
no  live  soldiers  in  their  interiors.  Indeed, 
some  disarranged  blankets  showed  that 
they  were  such  horses  as  carpenters  use, 
only  of  larger  size.  Every  object  stood  or 
lay  motionless  in  the  bright  moonlight. 
Just  to  make  certain  that  what  seemed  to 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


be  a  dog  or  a  wolf  crouching  near  the  road 
was  not  a  living  Cerberus,  I  threw  a  stone 
at  it,  only  to  find  that  it,  too,  was  made 
of  wood.  In  my  travels  later  I  met  a  sani¬ 
tary  engineer  who  had  been  ordered  to  lay 
out  this  or  a  like  camp,  and  when  he  had 
objected  to  its  location,  for  health  reasons, 
was  told  that  it  was  to  be  occupied  only  by 
beings  created  by  the  imagination  of  the 
German  aviators  and  the  Turkish  gunners. 
I  had  all  the  sensation  of  walking  in  a 
camouflage  inferno,  or  of  listening  to  pas¬ 
sages  of  Dante,  into  whom  my  companion 
was  transfigured. 

But  as  I  neared  the  rolling  stream,  the 
sound  of  its  waters  translated  me  instantly 
out  of  the  Dantean  into  a  Biblical  environ¬ 
ment.  My  young  companion  as  instantly 
became  the  young  prophet  Elisha,  and  as 
we  came  to  the  brink  of  the  narrow  but 
tumultuous  stream  it  had  the  appearance 

[178] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


of  being  divided,  for  in  the  bright  moon¬ 
light  there  was  a  white  path  over  it  almost 
at  the  water’s  level,  but  what  might  have 
been  the  brown  or  black  mantle  of  Elijah 
hung  on  either  side  (or  was  it  the  waters 
piled  up  “in  a  heap”?).  At  any  rate  we 
crossed  the  river  dry-shod  and  were,  before 
we  quite  realized  it,  “beyond  Jordan.” 

There  the  Far  East  rose  instantaneously 
out  of  the  sands  to  challenge  us,  in  the 
person  and  habit  of  a  Ghourka  guard,  the 
first  human  being  we  had  seen,  though  we 
were  quite  ready  to  believe  him  to  be  but 
an  automaton  or  camouflage  sentry  rising 
in  response  to  some  hidden  spring  which 
our  feet  had  unconsciously  touched.  At 
any  rate,  he  let  us  pass  without  other 
countersign  than  the  English  “shibboleth” 
on  our  tongue.  (And  we  were  careful  to 
say  it  using  the  accent  of  our  English  Gil¬ 
eadite  brothers  rather  than  our  customary 

[179] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


American  Ephraimitish  pronunciation,  for 
we  remembered  the  fate  of  the  Ephraimites 
who  sought  to  cross  the  fords  of  the  Jordan 
higher  up  and,  not  being  able  to  “frame  to 
pronounce”  the  countersign  according  to 
the  Gileadite  fashion,  were  straightway 
slain,  to  the  number  of  “forty  and  two 
thousand,”  I  afterward  read  in  the  record. 

As  I  looked  about  me  the  mountains  that 
had  seemed  so  near  the  river  when  seen 
from  Jerusalem,  had  receded;  the  plain 
with  its  scrubby  trees  stretched  away 
toward  their  dim  and  diminished  heights, 
which  now  looked  like  the  “black  tents  of 
Kedar”  rather  than  the  golden  tabernacle. 
Jackals  were  crying  by  the  score  or  by  the 
hundred,  off  in  the  wilderness.  Were  they 
the  Lord’s  “howling  for  Moab,”  as  Jere¬ 
miah  prophesied  ? 

After  walking  a  little  way  out  in  the 
sand  we  made  our  way  back  and  through 

[180] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


the  bushes  that  hid  the  farther  shore,  bap¬ 
tized  each  himself  in  the  turbid  waters,  im¬ 
petuous  and  uncompromising  as  the  Bap¬ 
tist  himself,  filled  each  his  pilgrim-bottle 
with  water  for  far  christenings,  and  then, 
offering  the  material  of  incense  to  the 
Ghourka  guard,  again  crossed  the  immortal 
river,  walked  up  through  circle  upon  circle 
of  the  silent  inferno  and  across  the  plain  to 
Jericho,  and,  travelling  through  the  early 
morning  hours  over  the  rough  purgatorial 
road,  now  free  of  thieves,  reached  by  sun¬ 
rise  the  prototype  of  the  “heavenly  city,” 
the  gate  of  “Paradiso,”  our  own  Jerusalem. 

But  when  I  again  looked  out  from  the 
summit  of  the  Mount  of  Olives,  the  moun¬ 
tains  beyond  Jordan  were  as  distant,  glow¬ 
ing,  and  mystical  as  ever. 

I  had,  however,  early  occasion  to  go 
again  beyond  Jordan,  and  this  time  into 
the  very  heart  of  these  mountains.  It  was 

[  181  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


when,  after  the  British  advance,  we  of  the 
Red  Cross  were  carrying  back  the  first  of 
the  refugees  from  that  region  (those  virile 
and  stately  people  of  Es-Salt,  some  of  whom 
claim  descent  from  the  Crusaders)  to  their 
looted  homes.  This  is  again  a  Red  Cross 
story  that  I  cannot  tell  here,  but  inciden¬ 
tally  in  that  night  journey  up  through  the 
awesome  ravine,  with  the  flashings  of  the 
guns  in  the  skies  above  its  black  rims,  I 
heard  the  sound  of  waters  as  of  the  foun¬ 
tain  described  by  the  prophet  Joel  that 
should  water  the  4 ‘Valley  of  Acacias”  (for 
that  valley  was  somewhere  in  this  region), 
and  early  the  next  morning  I  had  from  the 
top  of  a  mountain  near  Es-Salt  the  same 
view  that  Moses  must  have  had  with  his 
undimmed  sight  from  a  neighboring  moun¬ 
tain  of  the  land  that  was  to  him  the  land 
“beyond  Jordan,”  a  “land  of  hills  and  val¬ 
leys,”  that  “drinketh  water  of  the  rain  of 

[  182  ] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


heaven,”  a  land  upon  which  “are  the  eyes 
of  the  Lord  from  the  beginning  of  the  year 
unto  the  end  of  the  year,”  but  a  land  that 
was,  that  summer  morning,  parched  and 
hungry  and  thirsty,  with  scant  clothing  to 
cover  her  shame,  with  poison  in  the  dust  of 
her  feet,  but  with  the  vision  of  a  new  prom¬ 
ise  before  her  eyes,  since  the  British  with 
their  Allies  had  just  swept  the  enemy  op¬ 
pressor  out  of  the  land  from  the  dim  edge 
of  the  desert  to  “Lebanon  with  its  rampart 
of  snow.”  Down  the  ravine,  that  seemed 
awesome  by  night  and  sublime  even  by 
day,  I  passed  during  the  morning,  past  the 
waters  of  Nimrim,  doubtless  into  the  very 
Valley  of  Acacias  from  which  the  children 
of  Israel  made  their  last  day’s  march  to 
the  Jordan.  And  by  a  happy  coincidence 
it  was  the  Hebrew  regiment  that  was  guard¬ 
ing  the  valley,  with  men  among  them  that 
were  at  one  time  students  of  mine  in  New 

[  183  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


York  City.  Such  poetically  fit  lines  does 
history  sometimes  write  when  in  the  mood  ! 

As  I  came  down  upon  the  desert  plain 
again  the  thoughts  that  were  uppermost 
were,  however,  of  the  man  who  had  come 
crying  out  of  this  wilderness,  in  “  raiment  of 
camel’s  hair  and  a  leathern  girdle  about 
his  loins,”  who  “while  the  sacred  darkness 
trailed  along  the  mountains,”  through  which 
I  had  just  come,  could  in  the  storm  “hear 
the  voice  of  Elias  prophesying  loud  to  Him 
whose  face  was  covered  by  a  cloud,”  who, 
in  the  lines  of  Arthur  O’Shaughnessy,  which 
I  carried  gratefully  in  my  memory — 

“  Had  not  heard  of  the  far  towns, 
Nor  of  the  deeds  of  men,  nor  of  kings’  crowns, 
Before  the  thought  of  God  took  hold  of  him, 
As  he  was  sitting  dreaming  in  the  calm 
Of  the  first  noon  upon  the  desert’s  rim. 
Beneath  the  tall  fair  shadows  of  the  palm, 

All  overcome  with  some  strange  inward  balm.” 

[  184] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


I  could  but  remember,  too,  that  on  the 
very  day  of  my  night  journey  to  the  Jor¬ 
dan  one  who  was  sitting  dreaming  beneath 
a  palm  in  Jericho  had  been  beheaded  by  a 
Turkish-German  shell,  and  for  a  Teuton 
cause  not  less  unworthy  than  “for  Hero- 
dias’  sake,  his  brother  Philip’s  wife” — an 
unholy  cause  which  has  kept  foreign  pil¬ 
grims  from  these  banks  for  several  years. 
But  the  beheading  guns  are  silenced  and, 
no  doubt,  the  roads  will  fill  again  with  the 
thousands  from  other  lands  carrying  their 
shrouds  to  wash  them  in  the  Jordan  against 
the  day  of  their  burial. 

There  is,  however,  another  road  beyond 
Jordan.  It  is  the  road  through  Samaria 
and  Galilee  to  Dan,  the  road  on  which  I 
stopped  at  the  end  of  the  last  chapter  to 
pay  my  homage  to  the  “Man  of  Nazareth,” 
and  to  let  my  reader  follow  his  own  inter¬ 
ests  in  that  sacred  village.  It  is  the  road 

[185] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


which  leads  one  to  the  Sea  of  Galilee  and 
the  upper  reaches  of  the  Jordan.  The  Mas¬ 
ter  evidently  sometimes  followed  the  road 
along  the  farther  side  of  Jordan  on  his  way 
to  and  from  Jerusalem;  for  it  was  there 
that  He  blessed  the  children ;  but  his  usual 
way  must  have  been  over  the  hills  and  val¬ 
leys  by  which  we  have  come.  However 
this  may  have  been,  the  way  to  the  Sea  of 
Galilee  must  have  been  the  one  most  fa¬ 
miliar  to  his  feet  as  boy  and  man,  and  the 
view  to  the  north,  with  its  sweep  from 
Carmel  to  Hermon,  the  most  dearly  familiar 
to  his  eyes,  since  it  was  toward  the  villages 
out  over  the  northern  rim  that  he  was 
most  often  turning.  It  was  over  this  ridge 
toward  the  northeast  that  I  climbed  from 
the  well  of  the  Virgin,  where  I  filled  my 
canteen,  alongside  the  village  women  and 
children  with  their  jars  and  the  Anzac 
soldiers  who  were  guarding  its  waters. 

[186] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


The  light  Standard  Oil  tin  so  commonly 
substituted  for  the  heavy  ancient  earthen 
water-jar  south  of  the  old  British  lines  had 
not  come  into  use  at  the  north,  and  the 
women  and  children  were  still  carrying  the 
same  sort  of  jars  as  were  doubtlessly  used 
by  Mary  and  her  boy.  In  Cana,  through 
which  I  passed  two  or  three  hours  later, 
they  keep,  I  am  told  (for  I  did  not  stop  to 
see  them)  the  jars  in  which  the  water  was 
put  the  night  of  the  marriage-feast,  brought, 
no  doubt,  as  I  saw  the  women  of  Cana, 
bearing  it  in  their  jars,  and  from  the  same 
spring,  no  doubt,  as  that  from  which  they 
had  borne  it  that  night  up  the  long  street, 
lined  now  on  one  side  with  orchards  of  figs 
and  pomegranates  protected  by  a  cactus 
hedge,  into  the  village.  And  they  were  as 
happy  that  day  of  my  walk  through  Cana 
as  at  the  wedding-feast  of  long  ago,  for 
their  deliverance  had  come.  The  Anzac 

[  187] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


cavalry  were  passing  northward  all  the  day, 
and  immense  camel -trains  were  resting  in 
the  fields  beyond  for  their  night  journey. 
(If  ever  this  book  comes  into  the  hands  of 
any  one  of  those  fine,  strapping  Anzac 
camel-train  officers,  and  he  will  send  me 
their  names,  I  promise  him  that  their 
camels  will  follow  them  across  the  sands 
and  the  seas  to  their  Australian  homes). 
But  it  was  to  be  the  greatest  day  for  Cana, 
if  the  modern  Nathaniels  sitting  under  fig 
and  pomegranate  trees  and  the  fair  women 
and  happy  children  whom  I  saw  in  the 
streets  but  knew  it,  since  the  night  of  the 
marriage-feast,  or  the  day  when  the  noble¬ 
man  of  Capernaum  sent  to  Cana  to  have 
his  son  healed ;  for  before  night  of  that  very 
day  the  Deliverer  of  Palestine  himself  was 
to  pass  through  the  village.  Well  may  the 
beautiful  daughters  of  Cana  offer  pome¬ 
granates  to  those  who  pass,  and  the  boys  of 

[188] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


Cana  dance  in  the  street  (as  they  did  when 
I  was  returning  through  the  village,  and 
as  shamelessly  as  David  danced  before  the 
ark  of  the  Lord).  The  prophecy  of  Zecha- 
riah  that  the  streets  of  Jerusalem  should  be 
“full  of  boys  and  girls  playing  in  the 
streets”  was  being  fulfilled  even  in  Samaria 
and  Galilee. 

For  one  of  the  greatest  joys  of  these 
journeys  through  these  parts,  as  well  as  of 
my  experiences  in  Judaea,  was  to  see  the 
joyful  response  of  the  children  to  the  in¬ 
terest  of  those  who  are  trying  in  a  very 
practical  way  to  bless  them,  as  we  would 
our  own,  realizing  that  of  such  as  these, 
and  not  alone  of  such  as  our  own,  is  the 
kingdom  to  be  in  the  earth.  Certain  Naz¬ 
areth  children  whom  I  saw  at  the  fountain 
or  at  the  mill,  a  handsome  boy  whom  I 
saw  at  a  wayside  well  in  Samaria,  and  two 
shepherd  lads  out  upon  the  hills  of  Gali- 

[189] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


lee,  I  should  expect  to  be  the  equals  of  any 
of  our  New  York  State  boys,  if  only  they 
had  such  training  as  is  open  to  every  one  of 
ours.  Shall  we,  like  Nathaniel  of  Cana, 
continue  to  ask  the  damning  question  con¬ 
cerning  them,  “Can  anything  good  come 
out  of  Nazareth?”  when  the  angels  of 
genius  have  from  the  open  heavens  rested 
upon  the  heads  of  so  many  children  of  that 
land  in  the  past  ? 

I  have  spoken  (in  the  chapter  on  General 
Allenby)  of  the  approach  to  the  Sea  of  Gali¬ 
lee  (or  the  Lake  of  Tiberias)  of  the  entranc¬ 
ing  view  of  the  blue  lake  as  seen  from  the 
Nazareth  road.  Here  to  hark  back  again 
to  the  tabernacle  figure,  is  the  great  shin¬ 
ing  laver  that  stands  between  the  altar 
and  the  Tent  of  Meeting.  And  if  ever  an 
altar  rises  for  all  Christendom  to  the  Man 
of  Galilee,  it  should  be  here  upon  these 
hills  where  He  walked,  looking  across  the 

[190] 


Two  shepherd  boys  on  the  hills  of  Galilee. 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


sea  and  the  plain  (where  Hiram  of  Tyre 
had  cast  the  great  “molten  sea”  for  the 
Temple  of  Solomon  in  Jerusalem)  toward 
the  mountains  that  are  the  Tent  of  Meeting. 

It  is  said  that  Christ  never  entered  Tibe¬ 
rias,  but  doubtless  it  was  for  other  reason 
than  its  heavy,  suffocating  air,  down  under 
the  close-creeping  mountains,  six  hundred 
feet  or  more  below  sea-level.  I  was  not 
surprised  to  learn  that  many  cases  of 
cholera  had  been  that  very  day  found  in 
the  city  by  the  British  medical  officers.  I 
should  be  proud  to  tell  of  what  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Red  Cross  doctors  and  nurses  and  bac¬ 
teriologists  and  those  of  the  American 
Zionist  unit  did  in  co-operation  with  those 
medical  officers  to  stamp  out  the  plague 
promptly. 

I  slept  that  night  on  a  terrace  or  roofless 
porch  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Military 
Governor,  overlooking  the  sea.  My  bed 

[191] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


was  a  bare  bench,  but  had  it  been  a  rack 
or  a  harrow  I  should  have  slept,  I  think, 
nevertheless,  after  my  eighty-mile  walk 
in  the  parts  of  two  nights  and  of  two 
days,  with  little  sleep.  If  the  king  of  fleas, 
who  according  to  the  Arab  legend  has  his 
court  there,  held  his  revels  on  the  terrace 
that  night,  I  was  wholly  oblivious  of  the 
“activities”  of  his  subjects,  and  rose  at 
four  o’clock  refreshed  for  the  ride  to  Da¬ 
mascus,  for  as  I  have  already  proudly 
related  in  the  Allenby  chapter,  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  had  invited  me  to  accom¬ 
pany  him  and  his  staff  on  his  first  entry 
into  that  orchard  paradise  of  the  Arabs. 
In  three  automobiles,  with  an  armored  car 
for  vanguard  and  another  for  rear-guard, 
we  set  out  along  the  shore  of  the  lake  at 
sunrise,  and  in  an  hour  or  more  had  come 
down  near  to  the  “Waters  of  Merom”  and 
had  crossed  the  Jordan  at  “Jacob’s  Bridge”; 

[  192  ] 


View  of  the  Sea  of  Galilee  from  Tiberias. 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


for  here,  the  tradition  is,  Jacob  passed 
when  he  was  returning  to  his  homeland 
from  serving  Laban  fourteen  years  for  his 
two  daughters  and  six  for  his  flock  out  in 
Haran.  It  is  a  steep  and  was  a  slippery 
way  (for  the  autumn  rains  were  just  be¬ 
ginning  in  the  Jordan  valley)  up  the  far¬ 
ther  bank  to  the  plateau  on  which  we  rode 
for  two  or  three  hours,  the  very  plateau  on 
which  Saul  had  been  blinded  by  the  light 
out  of  heaven.  My  memory  is  of  a  light, 
growing  more  intense  and  dazzling,  as  we 
hurried  across  the  plain,  now  through  camps 
of  Anzac  cavalry,  and  now  through  desert 
places  where  Bedouins  were  searching  in 
the  fields  for  booty,  on  to  Damascus,  which 
I  can  see  at  this  distance  only  through  a 
cloud  or  halo  of  shining  dust,  with  a  shim¬ 
mering,  golden  hill  on  the  one  side  and  a 
green,  restful  meadow,  with  trees,  winding 
out  across  the  desert  on  the  other.  I  sus- 

[193] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


pect  that  somewhat  of  this  remembered 
glamour  was  subjective,  due  to  the  con¬ 
sciousness  of  approaching  this  city  of  an¬ 
cient  Oriental  splendor  and  treasures  on 
this  epochal  day  among  the  many  eventful 
days  of  the  centuries  of  its  shifting  empire. 

When  Feisul,  the  son  of  the  King  of  the 
Hedjaz,  had  entered  the  city  a  few  days 
before  (three,  I  think  it  was),  men  threw 
themselves  in  front  of  his  horse  to  be  trod 
upon,  or  pierced  themselves  with  swords  or 
knives  to  show  the  intensity  and  genuine¬ 
ness  of  their  joy — such  scenes  as  I  suppose 
will  never  be  seen  on  the  earth  again. 
General  Allenby,  the  Commander-in-Chief, 
who  had  made  this  picturesque  entry  pos¬ 
sible,  came  himself  unannounced  and  in 
as  unostentatious  and  matter-of-fact  a  way 
as  if  it  were  all  in  the  ordinary  day’s  routine. 
But  despite  this  lack  of  pageantry  and 
pomp,  it  was  the  first  day  of  a  new  epoch 

[  194  ] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


for  that  old  part  of  the  world.  An  English 
colonel  had  been  for  the  three  days  of  the 
occupancy  the  acting  governor  of  Damas¬ 
cus;  on  that  day  an  Arab  was  installed  as 
governor  of  his  own  people,  after  a  Turk¬ 
ish  reign  of  four  hundred  years.  And  it 
was  all  without  ceremony.  Feisul,  with  a 
group  of  his  attendants,  called  upon  the 
Commander-in-Chief  at  his  room  in  the 
Victoria  Hotel;  an  hour  later,  as  Emir, 
Feisul  was  standing  beneath  the  Arab  flag 
on  the  Government  House,  and  in  another 
hour  the  Commander-in-Chief  was  making 
his  way  in  his  gray  Rolls-Royce  car  across 
the  dun  plateau  to  the  fords  of  the  Jordan. 

There  is  little  that  I  can  say  of  that  day. 
Its  detail,  aside  from  its  mighty  significance, 
was  commonplace  enough.  Companies  of 
lancers  rode  through  the  streets.  I  was 
told  that  the  shops  were  closed,  but  there 
seemed  little  excitement.  There  were  forty 

[  195] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


dead  lying  among  the  living  in  one  of  the 
hospitals,  but  that  was  because  doctors  and 
nurses  and  helpers  had  fled.  There  seemed 
to  be  no  lack  of  food.  And  in  the  middle 
of  the  street  I  saw  a  sight  which  told  me 
more  than  statistics — a  man  was  selling 
fresh-cut  flowers. 

But  I  cannot  leave  Damascus  without 
speaking  of  him  who,  next  to  General 
Allenby,  I  suppose,  made  possible  this 
epochal  day.  It  was  a  young  Oxford  don, 
an  archaeologist  only  twenty-nine  years  old, 
who  bore  the  military  title  of  “  Colonel.” 
I  had  weeks  before  wished  to  go  to  the 
Arab  front,  east  and  south  of  the  Dead  Sea, 
and  chiefly  to  see  this  young  scholar,  who 
was  Great  Britain’s  representative  in  the 
staff  of  the  King  of  the  Hedjaz.  There  were 
reasons  of  state,  however,  for  my  not  going. 
But  by  a  happy  fortune  (the  reverse  of 
Mahomet’s  experience,  for  while  I  was  not 

[196] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


permitted  to  go  to  the  mountain,  the  moun¬ 
tain  had  come  to  me)  the  Arab  front  came 
to  me  in  Damascus  and  more  particularly 
this  young  liaison  officer.  At  the  hotel 
in  Damascus  General  Clayton,  of  General 
Allenby’s  staff,  entered  the  long  dining- 
hall,  accompanied  by  a  man  in  the  Hedjaz 
costume  (with  the  golden  octagonal  head- 
band  instead  of  the  round  and  black  band. 

I  asked  our  military  attache,  Captain 
Yale,  whom  I  had  the  pleasure  to  find 
there,  whether  this  English-looking  Arab  or 
Arab-appearing  Englishman  (for  he  looked 
very  much  as  President  Wilson  would  have 
looked  in  his  younger  days  if  attired  in 
the  same  costume)  were  by  any  chance 
the  archaeological  officer  whom  I  so  much 
wished  to  see.  My  question  was  answered 
in  a  moment  by  being  presented  by  General 
Clayton  to  “  Colonel  Lawrence,”  who  asked 
if  the  seat  next  mine  were  occupied.  As 

[197] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


happily  it  was  not,  I  had  unexpectedly  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  for  which  I  had  been 
willing  to  cross  a  desert  and  undergo  hun¬ 
ger,  thirst,  and  peril.  He  told  me  much  in 
those  minutes  that  I  have  not  permission 
to  repeat;  but  that  which  was  of  especial 
human  and  dramatic  interest  was  that  he 
who  had  spent  the  three  or  four  years  of 
the  war  out  there  in  this  unexpected  and 
surpassingly  successful  service,  who  had 
seen  this  new  power  rise  out  of  the  ruins 
of  the  ancient  empires  he  had  gone  out,  as 
I  suppose,  to  unearth  and  study;  who  had, 
indeed,  had  a  statesman’s  as  well  as  a  sol¬ 
dier’s  part  in  evoking  it  from  the  sands, 
who  had  himself,  as  governor  of  Damascus, 
for  three  days  sat  in  the  seats  of  Hazael, 
Darius,  Antiochus,  Tigranes,  Pompey,  and 
all  the  rest  better  known  to  him  than  to 
me,  and  who  had,  this  gentle  scholar,  set 
machine-guns  in  the  street  after  the  cap- 

[198] 


Colonel  T.  E.  Lawrence  in  Arab  costume. 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


ture  of  Damascus,  to  prevent  looting — that 
he,  having  finished  this  piece  of  work,  was 
now,  as  he  said  to  me,  about  to  take  off 
his  Arab  costume,  put  the  shoes  of  western 
civilization  on  his  bare  or  sandalled  feet, 
and  go  back  to  his  don’s  task  again.  We 
went  out  upon  a  little  balcony  of  the  hotel, 
after  the  luncheon  (a  luncheon  which  prom¬ 
ised  to  be  the  best  that  I  had  had  since  I 
had  reached  Palestine,  but  which  I  forgot 
to  eat)  and  there,  with  the  government 
building  in  the  background,  over  which  the 
first  Arab  flag  was  flying  in  Damascus,  I 
caught  a  view  of  this  young  student  of  the 
history  of  the  past  and  maker  of  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  present — a  view  which  should 
be  precious  to  the  world. 

I  had  in  this  unexpected  and  eventful 
journey  meanwhile  reached  Dan  and  gone 
far  beyond  it,  but  there  was  still  a  night’s 
journey  of  the  way  to  be  traversed  on  foot. 

[199] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


I  therefore  asked  the  Commander-in-Chief 
to  let  me  descend  from  the  automobile  on 
the  farther  side  of  the  Jordan,  on  the  bor¬ 
der  of  the  land  of  the  tribe  of  Dan,  that  I 
might  walk  to  where  he  had  caught  me  up 
into  his  car,  and  so  might  touch  with  my 
feet  every  mile  of  the  length  and  breadth 
of  this  sacred  land  and  complete  the  cross 
which  the  intersecting  paths  of  my  pil¬ 
grimage  had  made. 

It  was  my  first  night  of  cloud,  and  the 
road  down  into  the  Jordan  and  up  from  it 
was  black,  unlike  the  roads  I  had  travelled 
in  other  nights.  But  it  had,  none  the  less, 
its  memories,  even  if  at  times  I  had  con¬ 
fusedly  the  impression  of  walking  in  some 
familiar  place  in  the  old  black  roads  of  the 
Middle  West.  And  first  of  the  agreeable 
memories  that  rose  from  this  region  was  of 
Mahanaim,  where  the  people  of  the  neigh¬ 
borhood  brought  wheat  and  barley  and 

[200] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


parched  corn  and  honey  and  cheese  to 
David  (David,  whom  I  again  encountered 
on  the  road),  just  after  Absalom  had 
crossed  to  the  other  side  of  the  Jordan.  I 
wish  I  could  remember  the  names  of  those 
who  shared  their  food  with  me  that  night 
at  Mahanaim,  as  the  names  of  those  who 
gave  to  David  are  preserved  in  the  Book  of 
Samuel,  not  that  I  could  promise  them  such 
immortality  of  record,  but,  at  any  rate, 
thanks  which  will  live  as  long  as  I.  They 
were  themselves  not  only  sharing  with  me 
their  food,  which  included  fish  from  the 
lake,  but  were  gathering  all  the  barley  they 
could  find  in  the  neighborhood  to  make 
barley-water  for  the  cholera  patients  in 
Tiberias.  If  this  village  was  not  on  the 
site  of  the  ancient  Mahanaim,  it  should 
have  been.  But  I  shall  have  no  dispute 
with  archaeologists  as  to  the  sites  of  other 
ancient  villages  that  are  said  to  lie  along 

[  201  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


the  way.  I  will  let  Chorazin  and  Beth- 
saida  lie  in  the  oblivion  of  the  night’s  dark¬ 
ness.  I  will  not  even  insist,  though  I 
should  like  to,  that  Capernaum  once  lay 
where  I  wished  to  see  it  lying  in  the  first 
dim  light  that  came  across  the  lake.  But 
Magdala  remains  by  the  sepulchre  of  all 
this  departed  past.  The  men  and  children 
were  just  rising  from  their  sleep  on  the 
housetops,  but  Magdalene  was  already 
bearing  water  back  from  the  fountain,  for 
she  had  risen  early  while  it  was  yet  dark.” 

My  journey  to  Dan  was  ended  (though  I 
afterward  went  farther  up  the  Jordan  val¬ 
ley,  along  the  western  shore  of  the  “waters 
of  Merom  and  across  the  southern  Lebanons 
to  Tyre  and  Sidon  and  Beirut).  The  young 
man  who  had  been  my  Elisha  in  the  mid¬ 
night  walk  to  Jordan  came  out  to  meet  me 
at  my  journey’s  end,  and  while  he  was  pre¬ 
paring  a  simple  meal  for  the  both  of  us  on 

[202] 


BEYOND  JORDAN 


the  shore  of  the  Lake  of  Galilee,  I  had  a 
morning  bath  in  its  waters.  I  was  not  dis¬ 
posed  to  say,  as  Naaman  when  he  was  told 
to  go  and  bathe  in  the  river  Jordan:  “Are 
not  Abanah  and  Pharpar,  the  rivers  of 
Damascus,  better  than  all  the  waters  of 
Israel?”  To  me  the  “waters  of  Israel” 
were  soft  and  healing  and  satisfying.  And 
if  I  could  not  only  have  borne  back  to  my 
home  the  baptismal  water  of  the  Jordan, 
but,  like  Naaman,  when  he  went  back  to 
his  home  in  Damascus,  “two  mules’  burden 
of  earth”  from  the  land  through  which  the 
“waters  of  Israel”  flow,  I  should  use  that 
bit  of  earth  not  for  a  grave,  as  many  another 
has  done,  but  for  a  garden  that  it  might 
grow  flowers  such  as  I  saw  the  vender 
offering  in  the  streets  of  Damascus — such 
as  would  make  the  desert  places  in  Judaea 
and  Samaria  and  Galilee  to  blossom  again 
as  the  rose. 


[203] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


THE  ROSE  OF  JERICHO 

“What  though  the  Flowers  in  Joseph’s  Garden  grew 
Of  rarest  perfume  and  of  fairest  hue. 

That  morn  when  Magdalene  hastened  through 
Its  fragrant,  silent  paths  ? 

She  caught  no  scent  of  budding  almond-tree; 

Her  eyes,  tear-blinded  still  from  Calvary, 

Saw  neither  lily  nor  anemone — 

Naught  save  the  Sepulchre. 

But  when  the  Master  whispered  ‘Mary,’  lo ! 

The  Tomb  was  hid;  the  Garden  all  ablow; 

And  burst  in  bloom  the  Rose  of  Jericho — 

From  that  day  ‘Mary’s  Flower.’” 


[204] 


XIII 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


IDO  not  know  that  the  Psalmist  when 
he  sang  of  the  house  of  his  pilgrimage 
had  in  his  thought  this  land  of  my 
pilgrimage  from  Dan  to  Beersheba,  and 
from  the  sea  to  the  river.  In  all  prob¬ 
ability  he  had  not;  but  I  cannot  think 
of  words  more  appropriate  to  write  over 
its  door-posts  than  these,  for  it  was  to  me, 
as  it  has  been  for  multitudes  of  others  in 
the  centuries  since  Abraham  first  sojourned 
in  it,  a  “house  of  pilgrimage” — this  land 
with  its  spacious  porches  and  garden-ter¬ 
races  reaching  down  to  the  water  on  either 
side;  with  its  courts,  some  of  them  adorned 
with  palms,  as  was  that  in  which  Deborah 

[  205  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


sat  between  Ramah  and  Bethel,  when  she 
judged  Israel;  and  with  its  lofty  chambers 
whose  walls  are  covered  with  ever-chang¬ 
ing  tapestries,  such  as  only  the  Orient  suns 
can  weave. 

The  descendants  of  Abraham,  who  were 
innumerable  as  the  sands  and  "in  multi¬ 
tude  as  the  stars,”  even  in  the  days  of  St. 
Paul’s  letter  addressed  to  the  Hebrews, — 
and  happily  preserved, — 4 'confessed  that 
they  were  pilgrims  and  strangers”  in  this 
land  which  was  to  them  as  the  earth:  and 
there  have  been  many  millions  since,  of 
other  than  the  seed  of  Abraham,  who,  look¬ 
ing  to  a  heavenly  house  of  many  man¬ 
sions,”  have  found  this  the  earthly  proto¬ 
type  of  that  "other  country”:  pilgrims 
and  Crusaders;  saints  in  age  and  children; 
emperors  and  shepherds;  hermits  and 
popes. 

As  I  begin  this  last  chapter  I  am  again 

[  206  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


of  their  number.  I  am  setting  out  upon 
a  second  pilgrimage  to  this  Holy  Land  in 
the  wake  of  hundreds  of  thousands  who 
have  gone  from  other  lands  in  other  days, 
and  among  the  very  first  of  those  from  the 
New  World  in  this  new  day.  Since  that 
night  of  my  leaving  Palestine,  when  an 
English  airman  flying  over  the  plain  of 
Sharon  caught  the  German  wireless  that 
was  prophetic  of  the  end,  the  peace  has 
come  and  I  go  back  in  no  Crusader’s  peril 
but  only  with  a  Pilgrim’s  discomfort — 
back  to  the  land  which  was  to  my  migrant 
fathers  as  it  was  to  Abraham  a  house  of 
pilgrimage,  and,  as  it  was  to  Jacob,  a 
“Bethel,”  a  very  “gate  of  heaven.”  One 
of  my  earliest  memories  is  of  hearing  my 
father,  who  had  reached  the  last  step  in 
that  migrancy  several  generations  long 
from  the  highlands  of  Scotland,  as  he  sat 
by  night  in  the  only  lighted  room  in  a 

[  207  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


square  mile  of  prairie  darkness  singing  this 
quaint  migrant  hymn: 

“I’m  a  pilgrim  and  I’m  a  stranger 
I  can  tarry,  I  can  tarry  but  a  night. 

Do  not  detain  me  for  I  am  going 
To  where  the  fountains  are  ever  flowing. 

I’m  a  pilgrim  and  I’m  a  stranger; 

I  can  tarry,  I  can  tarry  but  a  night !” 

For  he  and  those  who  went  before  him 
were  4 ‘pilgrims”  and  not  vagrants  upon 
the  earth.  They  had  a  destination  before 
them  in  all  their  wanderings  westward; 
indeed  a  predestined  place  awaited  them, 
in  their  clear  and  confident  Presbyterian 
faith,  of  which  the  Biblical  “land  of 
promise”  was  but  the  earnest. 

But  as  I,  beginning  my  second  pilgrimage, 
see  the  buildings  on  the  shores  of  my  own 
land,  that  have  been  lifted  till  they  seem 
veritable  “mansions  in  the  skies,”  dwindle 
and  fade  upon  the  horizon,  and  as  I  look 

[  208  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


back  with  a  summarizing  consciousness  of 
the  achievements  and  aspirations  of  that 
land,  which  I  have  come  to  know  from  one 
shore  to  the  other,  I  realize  that  after  all 
it  too  is  a  holy  land,  full  of  holy  places, 
of  which  we  are  often  not  aware  until  we 
see  them  from  afar. 

If  I  needed  other  than  my  own  experi¬ 
ence  to  tell  me  this,  I  should  know  it  from 
the  tongues  of  such  as  Jacob  Riis  and  Mary 
Antin  and  Michael  Pupin.  I  heard  the 
last-named  of  these,  the  great  scientist, 
and  great  poet  as  well,  though  I  do  not 
know  that  he  has  ever  written  a  line  of 
verse,  tell  one  night  of  his  conversation — 
on  a  visit  to  his  native  land,  Serbia,  which 
is  lastingly  to  be  thanked  for  giving  him 
to  us  and  to  the  world — with  an  aged  Ser¬ 
bian  who  had  returned  from  a  pilgrimage 
to  the  Holy  Land  and  was  describing  the 
wearying  incidents  of  the  journey  and  the 

[  209  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


agonizing  joy  of  the  day  when  he  at  last 
looked  upon  the  Holy  City.  Pupin  said 
to  him:  “Yes,  Pilgrim,  I  can  understand 
your  ecstasy;  for  I,  too,  have  gone  on  a 
pilgrimage  to  a  holy  city.”  “Where?” 
asked  the  Old  Pilgrim.  “In  America,” 
answered  the  Scientist.  “But,”  said  the 
Pilgrim,  “there  are  no  holy  places  in  Amer¬ 
ica.”  “Yes,”  replied  the  Scientist,  “there 
are  many.”  And  then  he  told  the  incred¬ 
ulous  Pilgrim  of  a  place  called  Albany,  in 
the  State  of  New  York,  where  Joseph 
Henry,  his  scientific  divinity,  had  made 
the  discovery  of  certain  eternal  forces  and 
laws,  as  potent  and  immutable  as  the  fire 
that  burned  in  the  unconsumed  bush  (like 
modern  electricity)  or  the  laws  announced 
from  Sinai. 

America  has  its  holy  places,  even  if  they 
are  not  always  surrounded  by  the  lights  of 
candles — places  where  the  Almighty  mani- 

[  210  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


fests  Himself  by  some  unmistakable  sign, 
as  in  the  movement  of  multitudes,  or  where 
the  individual  rises  to  the  majesty  of  a 
god  in  some  divinely  done  deed  or  where 
flesh  becomes  spirit  in  some  undying  ut¬ 
terance.  Only  to-day  have  I  seen  in  Paris 
an  Arab  prince  who  turns  to  America  to 
find  incarnate  a  sacred  principle  that  was 
first  taught  among  those  holy  hills  from 
which  I  rode  by  automobile  and  within 
a  few  hours,  in  my  “beyond  Jordan”  jour¬ 
ney,  to  his  capital.  And  I  have  by  me  a 
fragment  of  a  letter  from  the  head  of  the 
Moslems  in  Palestine  (the  Moslems  whom 
the  Kaiser  hoped  to  stir  to  a  Holy  War) 
ascribing  to  America  as  holy  a  function 
as  can  be  fulfilled  by  any  nation.  I  quote 
a  bit  of  it  with  its  thoroughly  Calvinistic 
preordination  preamble: 

Those  to  whom  He  was  well-disposed  he  made 
to  do  good;  those  pre-ordained  to  do  evil,  do  evil. 

[211] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


This  is  the  law  of  God  in  this  creation,  and  no  one 
can  change  his  decrees.  No  one  can  dispute  the 
fact  known  to  God  and  confirmed  by  your  noble 
history,  O  citizens  of  America,  that  out  of  com¬ 
passion  and  charity  He  created  you  to  do  good  to 
humanity,  and  has  through  you  always  accomplished 
good  works,  keeping  you  innocent  of  all  evil-doing. 

With  such  an  imputed  achievement  and 
destiny  America  must  indeed  have  its 
sacred  places !  God  help  us  to  be  worthy 
of  the  ascription  and  keep  us,  in  the  words 
of  the  Mufti’s  prayer,  “  innocent  of  all 
evil-doing.” 

But  the  little  land  in  which  the  Mufti 
guards  the  Holy  Rock,  in  which  the  Ark 
of  the  Covenant  so  long  resided,  and  in 
which  the  Cross  of  the  Christian  world 
had  its  foot  near  the  Holy  Cave,  is  to  be 
forever  the  Holy  Land.  The  bread  of  its 
sacrament  has  fed  a  world  hungering  for 
righteousness;  the  blood  of  its  testament 

[  212  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


has  flowed  through  millions  of  cups  to 
thirsty  lips;  the  fire  of  its  burnt  offerings 
has  kindled  flames  on  altars  innumerable. 
And  to  it  for  all  time  the  feet  of  pilgrims 
will  continue  to  go. 

When  I  crossed  France  and  Italy  on 
my  first  pilgrimage,  I  could  see  without 
stretch  of  imagination  the  throng  that 
went  out  in  the  Middle  Ages  from  the  fields 
and  villages  and  cities  along  the  very  roads 
through  which  I  passed,  for  it  was  the 
season  of  the  year  when,  as  Chaucer  said  in 
his  “Canterbury  Tales,”  “men  ’gan  to  go 
on  pilgrimages.”  Walter  Besant  has  given 
us  this  picture  of  their  going  in  the  First 
Crusade:  “With  the  first  warm  days  of 
early  spring  the  impatience  of  the  people 
was  no  longer  to  be  restrained.  Refusing 
to  wait  while  the  chiefs  of  the  Crusade 
organized  their  forces,  laid  down  their 
line  of  march,  and  matured  their  plans, 

[  213  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


they  flocked  in  thousands  to  the  banks  of 
the  Meuse  and  the  Moselle,  clamoring  for 
their  immediate  departure.  Most  of  them 
were  on  foot,  but  those  who  by  any  means 
could  raise  the  price  of  a  horse  came 
mounted.  Some  travelled  in  carts  drawn 
by  oxen.  Their  arms  were  such  as  they 
could  afford  to  buy.  Every  one,  however, 
brandished  a  weapon  of  some  kind;  it 
was  either  a  spear  or  an  axe,  or  a  sword, 
or  even  a  heavy  hammer.  Wives,  daugh¬ 
ters,  children,  old  men  dragged  themselves 
along  with  the  exultant  host,  nothing 
doubting  that  they,  too,  would  be  per¬ 
mitted  to  share  the  triumph,  to  witness  the 
victory.  From  the  far  corners  of  France, 
from  Brittany,  from  the  islands,  from  the 
Pyrenees,  came  troops  of  men  whose  lan¬ 
guage  could  not  be  understood,  and  who  had 
but  one  sign,  that  of  the  Cross,  to  signify 
their  brotherhood.  Whole  villages  came 

[  214  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


en  masse ,  accompanied  by  their  priests, 
bringing  with  them  their  children,  their 
cattle,  their  stores  of  provisions,  their  house¬ 
hold  utensils,  their  all !  While  the  poorest 
came  with  nothing  at  all,  trusting  that 
miracles,  similar  to  that  which  protected 
the  Israelites  in  the  desert  would  protect 
them  also — that  manna  would  drop  from 
heaven  and  the  rocks  would  open  to  supply 
them  with  water.  And  such  was  their 
ignorance  that,  as  the  walls  of  town  after 
town  became  visible  on  the  march,  they 
pressed  forward  eagerly  demanding  if  that 
was  Jerusalem.” 

The  Meuse  and  the  Moselle  were  mobil¬ 
ized  for  the  rescue  of  nearer  sepulchres,  as 
I  passed  through  their  valleys,  but  the 
spirit  of  the  Crusades  was  there  as  every¬ 
where  from  these  valleys  to  the  far  corners 
of  Brittany  and  to  the  Pyrenees. 

As  I  return  on  my  second  pilgrimage, 

[215] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


the  nearer  sepulchres  have  been  recovered, 
and  already  thousands  of  pilgrims  are  on 
the  way  to  visit  them. 

It  is  recorded  that  the  cause  of  pilgrimage 
had  an  enormous  impetus  in  the  early 
eleventh  century  “by  the  conversion  of 
the  Huns  who  had  hitherto  barred  the 
old  Pilgrim  Way.”  The  twentieth  century 
“Huns”  no  longer  bar  the  way  to  the  val¬ 
leys  of  the  nearer  sepulchres,  nor  to  the 
land  of  the  far  sepulchre,  which  these 
“Huns”  hoped  to  hold  through  their  Is¬ 
cariot  treachery  in  selling  their  Christ  to 
the  Turk. 

And  as  I  pass  through  redeemed  France, 
across  the  old  Pilgrim  paths  through  the 
Alps,  and  down  to  the  coasts  of  Italy  to 
take  ship  for  the  Holy  Land  again,  I  find 
many  eager  to  go  upon  the  same  pilgrimage 
as  those  of  the  Middle  Ages,  of  varied 
tongues  and  creeds,  Jew  and  Gentile  (in- 

[  216  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


deed,  my  companion  is  a  noble  Jew),  who 
have  “but  one  sign,  that  of  the  Cross  [the 
Red  Cross]  to  signify  their  brotherhood”; 
yet  eager  to  go,  not  with  a  thought  of  selfish 
personal  celestial  salvation,  but  only  for 
the  earthly  happiness  and  the  immortal 
good  of  others — to  heal  and  nurse  and 
comfort,  a  new  kind  of  crusading  that  has 
only  kindliness  for  the  ancient  foes  of  those 
who  bore  a  cross  of  narrower  sympathy. 

The  Palestine  to  which  I  go  on  my  second 
pilgrimage  is  a  different  Holy  Land  from 
that  which  was  on  the  prairie  horizon  of 
my  boyhood,  though  changed  through  the 
years  by  artists  and  writers  and  pastors 
and  lecturers,  down  to  Sir  George  Adam 
Smith;  different  from  the  land  which  on 
my  first  pilgrimage  I  saw  from  the  Convent 
of  St.  Onofrio  on  the  Janiculum  Hill  over¬ 
looking  Rome,  where  I  found  some  of  the 
sheets  of  “Jerusalem  Delivered”  in  Tasso’s 

[  217  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


own  hand;  different  from  the  land  which 
I  saw  one  morning  in  the  iEgean  as  I  looked 
at  sunrise  eastward  across  the  isle  of  Pat- 
mos.  For  I  have  seen  with  my  own  eyes 
its  bare  hills;  I  have  passed  through  many 
of  its  squalid  and  huddled  villages,  and 
over  its  lonely  roads;  I  have  drunk  of  its 
broken  fountains,  I  have  knelt  at  its 
sepulchres  with  their  tinselled  and  faded 
mementos;  I  have  seen  the  procession 
of  sad-faced  women  burden-bearers,  the 
multitude  of  its  joyless  children  without 
hope  of  a  kingdom  of  heaven  here  upon 
the  earth,  the  cumulative  misery  of  cen¬ 
turies  of  misrule  and  oppression,  and  the 
ugliness  of  its  religious  jealousies  and  hat¬ 
reds,  but  I  go  back  to  it  with  an  even  deeper 
and  more  reverent  “ passion  of  pilgrimage” 
than  before,  and  with  a  hope  not  merely 
of  the  restoration  of  its  glory  by  the  wash¬ 
ing  away  of  the  putrid  dust  of  centuries, 

[  218  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


but  of  the  enhancing  of  that  ancient  glory 
by  what  the  nations  can  bring  afresh  of 
their  “glories  and  honors”  into  it. 

And  I  go  at  an  expectant,  crucial  mo¬ 
ment  in  the  civilization  which  takes  its 
name  from  the  land  to  which  I  am  going. 
The  nations  of  the  earth  are  gathering 
around  the  peace-table  this  very  day,  the 
first  day  of  the  week  which  these  same 
nations  or  most  of  them  have  kept,  in  name 
at  least,  as  a  holy  day  in  memory  of  a  cer¬ 
tain  memorable  morning  in  Jerusalem.  I 
can  all  but  see  the  place  of  their  initial 
meeting  from  my  windows,  and  the  upper¬ 
most  wish  in  my  thought,  as  I  hear  the 
commonplace  sounds  of  the  street  rise 
about  me  and  look  out  over  the  myriad 
roofs,  is  that  this  peace  conference  might 
have  been  held  out  in  Palestine,  despite 
all  the  physical  discomfort  it  would  have 
involved  (even  if  such  discomfort  is  not 

[  219  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


to  be  compared  with  that  of  the  millions 
of  peacemakers  who  have  fought  for  it 
from  the  North  Sea  to  Bagdad). 

I  wish  that  the  nations  through  their 
delegates  might  have  assembled  in  this 
land  which  was  the  common  homeland 
of  their  civilization,  and  made  its  sacred 
plateau  their  table: 

There  where  the  East  and  the  West  meet  in  the 
Near  East  and  the  Near  West: 

There  where  Mount  Ebal  and  Mount  Gerizim 
might  look  down  with  their  antiphony  of  national 
curse  and  blessing  upon  those  who  take  part  in  this 
conference : 

There  where  from  the  desert  border  to  the  south 
the  commandments  of  Sinai  might  be  heard  afresh, 
face  to  face,  with  their  original  sanction,  and  with 
the  remembrance  of  the  fate  of  those  who  worshipped 
the  golden  calf  and  of  those  who  drank  its  golden 
dust — the  commandments  that  are  at  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  all  states,  and  should  be  remembered  in  all 
the  relations  of  states  one  with  another: 

[  220  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


There  where  was  added  the  new  commandment 
“Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself”  than 
which,  with  the  first,  “there  is  none  other  command¬ 
ment  greater”: 

There  where  was  proclaimed  with  godlike  au¬ 
thority  the  doctrine  of  human  brotherhood  and 
world  neighborliness  and  the  beatitude,  “Blessed 
are  the  peacemakers  for  they  shall  be  called  the 
children  of  God.” 

There  where  in  the  humblest  of  places 
the  event  occurred  from  which  all  the  years 
of  our  calendars  are  counted — for  it  is 
“the  year  of  our  Lord”  in  which  this  World 
Congress  assembles. 

There  where  the  noise  of  making  things 
and  the  tumult  of  doing  things  have  not 
yet  come  to  disturb  the  silences  of  the 
eternal  processes  or  to  make  inaudible 
such  a  voice  as  that  which  Elijah  heard 
on  Horeb. 

There  where  is  ever  consciously  present 

[  221  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


the  “  good-will  of  Him  who  dwelt  in  the 
bush.” 

And  to  this  wish  there  was  added  a 
second,  that,  as  Abraham  digged  a  well  in 
Beersheba  in  witness  of  the  contract  of 
peace  which  he  made  with  Abimelech,  a 
well  that  became  as  a  “fountain  of  gar¬ 
dens’’  in  the  midst  of  the  desert,  so  this 
little  land  stretching  away  from  the  well 
of  Beersheba  to  the  fountain  of  the  Jordan 
in  Dan,  might  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
world  peace  become  a  permanent  witness, 
in  its  returning  and  enhanced  glory,  to 
this  peace  written  by  the  spiritual  descen¬ 
dants  of  Abraham  who  are  greater  in  num¬ 
ber  now  than  the  countless  stars  in  the 
Palestinian  skies,  for  Jew  and  Christian 
and  Mohammedan,  all  look  back  to  him 
as  their  father  and  to  Moses  as  their  Law¬ 
giver. 

As  it  is,  since  the  peace  is  to  be  the 

[222] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


“Peace  of  Paris”  or  the  “Peace  of  Ver¬ 
sailles,”  and  the  first  wish  cannot  be  lit¬ 
erally  realized,  the  second  rises  to  take 
its  place — the  wish  that  even  if  the  terms 
of  this  peace  cannot  be  written  on  this 
plateau  for  a  table,  in  the  “City  of  Peace” 
(which  is  the  meaning  of  the  word  “Jeru¬ 
salem”),  these  terms  may  yet  have  this 
witness  and  confirmation:  that  wells  shall 
be  digged,  both  literally  and  figuratively,  in 
the  dry  places  of  that  land,  and  that  it 
shall  be  made  to  illustrate  in  the  small 
that  which  the  nations  wish  to  see  pervade 
the  whole  earth. 

And  this  “eternal  excellency”  is  to  be 
realized,  as  I  believe,  by  making  it  an  inter¬ 
national  reservation  within  the  circle  of 
the  whole  earth,  even  as  a  great  park  is 
set  apart  within  the  bounds  of  a  single 
country — a  reservation  holy  unto  the  cause 
of  the  human  brotherhood  proclaimed  there 

[  223  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


two  thousand  years  ago  by  one  who  never 
travelled  beyond  the  horizon  that  could  be 
seen  without  glasses  from  the  top  of  Mount 
Ebal  on  a  clear  day,  a  reservation  so  small 
that  its  beautifying  and  enriching  and 
enhaloing  would  be  no  greater  financial 
burden  for  the  nations  gathered  at  the 
Conference  than  is  the  maintenance  of 
Central  Park  with  its  Natural  History  and 
Art  Museums  by  the  people  of  New  York 
City,  or  of  the  Lake  Front  parks  of  Chicago 
with  their  buildings  devoted  to  art  and 
science  and  education  and  recreation  by 
the  people  of  that  city. 

It  could  be  made  a  land  of  entrancing 
beauty  with  its  range  of  flora  extending, 
in  the  width  of  Long  Island  (to  visualize 
its  narrowness  to  Americans)  from  that 
of  the  subtropical  plain,  through  that  of 
the  temperate-zoned  mountains,  down  to 
that  of  the  tropical  valley  more  than  a 

[  224  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


thousand  feet  below  the  level  of  the  Mediter¬ 
ranean  Sea — if  only  water  were  abundantly 
available  at  all  seasons.  When  Moses 
looked  out  upon  it,  remembering  the  water¬ 
less  wilderness  and  back  of  that  the  land 
of  Egypt,  where  nothing  grew  except  by 
irrigation,  he  said,  “It  is  not  like  the  land 
of  Egypt  from  which  ye  came  out  where 
thou  sowedst  thy  seed  and  wateredst  it 
out  of  thy  foot  as  a  garden  of  herbs,”  but 
a  land  whose  blessing — the  blessing  of  the 
rain  which  literally  contains  in  its  drops 
all  the  other  physical  blessings  to  man¬ 
kind — was  the  rain  given  in  season,  “the 
former  and  the  latter  rain”;  and  whose 
curse  was  the  lack  of  rain. 

Jeremiah’s  “Rhapsody  of  the  Drought” 
is  the  most  eloquent  of  that  curse: 

They  sit  in  black  upon  the  ground.  .  .  .  Their 
nobles  send  their  little  ones  to  the  waters;  they 

[  225  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


come  to  the  pits  and  find  no  water;  they  return 
with  their  vessels  empty;  they  are  ashamed  and 
confounded  and  cover  their  heads.  Because  of  the 
ground  which  is  chapt  for  that  no  rain  hath  been 
in  the  land,  the  ploughmen  are  ashamed,  they  cover 
their  heads.  For  the  hind  also  in  the  field  calveth 
and  forsaketh  her  young,  because  there  is  no  grass. 
And  the  wild  asses  stand  on  the  bare  heights;  they 
pant  for  air  like  jackals;  their  eyes  fail  because 
there  is  no  herbage. 


“The  chief  thing  in  life  is  water,”  said 
the  ancient  son  of  Sirach  in  his  Wisdom 
Book,  “water,  bread,  and  a  garment  to 
cover  shame.”  And  after  walking  over 
the  thirsty  hills  and  through  the  valleys 
whose  streams  were  turned  to  pitch  I  could 
understand  why  water  was  put  before 
bread  in  the  list  of  the  chief  things,  and 
why  Jeremiah  wrote  so  eloquently  of  the 
waterless  days. 

I  heard  often  the  sound  of  the  grinding 

[  226  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


in  the  house  as  I  passed  through  the  streets 
of  the  villages;  I  have  occasionally  seen 
the  line  of  children  at  the  public  oven  with 
their  flat  loaves  of  barley  (such  no  doubt 
as  the  five  which  the  boy  of  the  miracled 
multiplying  of  the  loaves  had)  waiting  in 
turn  for  the  baking;  and  I  know  with  what 
difficulty  whole  villages  find  the  patched 
garments  to  cover  their  shame.  (In  Hebron, 
I  saw  a  girl,  one  day  as  I  was  passing,  with 
nothing  but  a  piece  of  gunny  sack  to  cover 
her,  and  in  Cana  I  remember  seeing  two 
lads  of  twelve  or  more  without  even  this 
protection).  But  water  is  the  chief  thing, 
beyond  either  bread  or  clothing.  The  one 
characteristic  universal  figure  in  Palestine 
is  the  erect  woman  with  the  water-jar  upon 
her  head  (replaced,  as  I  have  said,  in  some 
places  by  the  lighter  if  less  picturesque 
Standard  Oil  tin),  or  the  bent  man  with 
the  goatskin  upon  his  back  (though  he  is 

[  227  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


now  giving  over  his  long-distance  carrying 
of  water  in  some  places  to  the  iron  pipe). 

One  appreciates,  too,  in  travelling  through 
this  land,  in  the  summer  at  any  rate,  why 
the  prophecies  of  the  4 4 Great  Restoration” 
all  had  visions  of  streams  or  of  pools  of 
water  in  them;  why  the  British  in  their 
restoration  of  it  began  by  carrying  water 
first  from  the  Nile  to  its  borders  and  then 
from  the  springs  beyond  Bethlehem  to 
Jerusalem;  and  why  a  river  of  pure  water 
is  made  to  run  through  the  heaven  of  the 
Apocalypse  in  the  ultimate  Restoration. 

Palestine  has  its  annual  rainfall  of  thirty 
inches  or  thereabout,  but  every  drop  of 
this  rain  falls  within  less  than  one-half  the 
year.  In  the  other  half  there  is  no  rain 
at  all.  The  storage  of  water  for  these  lean, 
dry  months — delightful  as  they  must  be 
when  they  first  come,  when  the  winter  is 
over  and  gone  and  the  rains  are  past  and 

[  228  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


the  voice  of  the  turtle  is  heard  in  the  land 
— becomes  the  supreme  problem  of  the 
land,  for  without  a  vision  which  has  in 
it  a  water-supply  the  people  perish. 

I  have  not  as  yet  seen  Palestine  in  its 
wet  season,  but  it  must  have  been  toward 
the  end  of  that  season,  when  even  the  hills 
of  the  Jordan  wilderness  are  abloom  with 
myriad  flowers,  that  Moses  saw  it  as  a  literal 
“land  of  promise.”  I  wonder  how  it  could 
have  seemed  such  a  land  if  he  had  looked 
upon  it  as  I  saw  it  in  August,  1918,  from 
near  Nebo,  when  its  barrenness  glistered 
in  the  sun  and  the  Britishers,  “strong  and 
of  good  courage,”  who  were  fighting  like 
Joshua  to  possess  it,  panted  for  the  water- 
brooks  of  their  island  home.  And  yet  that 
land  became  a  veritable  “land  of  promise,” 
a  “house  of  pilgrimage”  for  the  greatest 
events  in  a  thousand  years  of  the  earth’s 
history. 


[  229] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


And  if  such  genius  as  enlarged  by  millions 
of  acres  the  fertile  parts  of  the  Nile  Valley, 
or  built  the  Roosevelt  Dam,  or  digged  the 
Suez  or  the  Panama  Canal,  or  has  made 
the  Mesopotamian  Valley  to  become  fruit¬ 
ful  again  (as  if  Eve,  driven  from  her  Para¬ 
dise,  and  beyond  child-bearing  age,  were 
readmitted  and  given  promise  of  a  new 
progeny),  if  such  genius  from  the  several 
nations  were  to  offer  itself  (and  what  genius 
would  not?)  to  impound  the  water  or  to 
pass  through  the  valleys  of  Raca  and  make 
them  wells,  or  to  carry,  like  King  Hezekiah, 
the  living  streams  underground  but  in  iron 
tubes,  into  which  (to  modernize  the  ancient 
figure  of  sword  and  ploughshare)  the  gun- 
barrels  might  be  beaten  and  made  service¬ 
able  in  other  trenches — if  this  consecrated 
genius  were  to  undertake  this  service,  the 
gardens  of  this  land  might  be  made  per¬ 
petual,  its  orchards  be  made,  like  Joseph 

[  230  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


in  Jacob’s  blessing  of  his  children,  ever 
“fruitful  boughs  by  fountains,”  and  its 
maritime  plains  flecked  black  with  shadows 
of  groves  of  orange  and  almond  trees  as 
“flocks  of  goats  that  lie  along  the  side  of 
Gilead”  (even  in  1918  I  saw  one  grove 
of  30,000  trees  upon  this  plain),  while 
fields  would  grow  again  with  barley  or 
wheat,  descendants  of  the  wheat  that  once 
grew  wild  there  and  became  the  mother 
of  the  domesticated  wheat-fields  of  the 
Dakotas  and  Argentine,  like  the  people 
who  once  filled  the  hills  and  plains  about 
and  have  become  domesticated  in  all  the 
fertile  parts  of  the  earth. 

I  do  not  know  that  the  geologist  could 
find  materials  among  the  Judaean  hills  for 
such  walls  as  John  saw  in  his  Apocalypse, 
but  again  I  know  that  the  geological,  en¬ 
gineering,  architectural,  and  artistic  genius 
of  these  nations  could  and  would  find  the 

[  231  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


quarries  of  these  stones,  fashion  them, 
adorn  them,  and  carry  them  to  embody 
there  this  vision,  or  one  which  will  better 
translate  a  heavenly  city  into  an  earthly 
habitation  and  keep  it  as  clean  as  the  streets 
which  St.  John  saw,  6 4  as  of  transparent 
glass,”  though  no  earthly  municipal  re¬ 
former  could  let  them  be  paved  with  gold. 

It  is  a  happy  though  modest  augury  of 
the  coming  to  pass  of  such  a  translation 
or  municipal  transfiguration  that  already 
the  Governor  of  Jerusalem  not  only  has 
plans,  as  I  have  said,  for  giving  the  Inner 
City  a  worthy  setting  among  the  hills  but 
also  has  begun  its  cleansing.  There  are 
special  sweepers  now  to  keep  clean  the 
44 Via  Dolorosa”  which  the  world  has  shed 
enough  tears  in  its  memory  to  wash  as  the 
4 4  very  heaven  for  cleanness.” 

P’or  more  than  a  44 house  of  pilgrimage” 
this  land  is  to  be,  more  than  a  44 highway 

[  232  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


.  .  .  and  a  way,”  as  Isaiah  prophesied  it 
would  be,  and  as  it  has  been  for  those  who 
pass  from  one  continent  to  another;  more 
than  a  place  of  sojourners,  symbolic  of  a 
celestial  “ other  country”;  more  than  a 
round  of  shrines  whose  visitation  will  pro¬ 
cure  special  heavenly  privileges  and  release 
from  earthly  duties;  more  than  a  place 
of  penance.  It  is  the  ground  on  which  to 
visualize  in  the  earth  the  dreams  of  the 
civilization  gathered  at  the  peace-table,  to 
show  a  practicable  internationalism,  not  a 
nebulous  thing,  but  a  working  model  to 
which  the  East  may  look  up  from  one  side 
and  the  West  from  the  other,  and  find 
themselves,  in  looking  toward  the  same 
thing,  brought  into  consciousness  of  a  prac¬ 
tical  planetary  brotherhood.  The  country 
is  so  small  (for  I  am  thinking  only  of  the 
land  west  of  the  Jordan  and  south  of  the 
Litany  River)  that  even  the  twelve  tribes 

[  233  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


could  not  squeeze  themselves  into  it;  and 
yet  it  is  so  large  in  its  significance  that  all 
the  nations  can  find  a  place  for  their  glory 
and  honor  in  it. 

We  are,  in  our  promotion  of  the  theory 
of  self-determination,  encouraging  the  divi¬ 
sion  of  the  earth  into  smaller  and  more 
numerous  aliquot  parts.  It  is  an  essential 
complement  of  this  that  somewhere  there 
shall  be  symbolized  the  supreme  inter¬ 
national  planetary  whole  of  which  these 
are  but  confessed  national  fractions.  And 
where  in  all  the  world  can  a  place  be  found 
more  fit  for  this  visualization  than  this 
spot,  where  this  civilization  has  had  its 
greatest  prophets  and  noblest  teachers? 

I  should  be  presuming  in  suggesting  the 
fate  of  this  land  (being  an  American,  whose 
country  had  no  direct  part  in  its  redemp¬ 
tion)  if  I  did  not  feel  that  through  a  long 
line  of  pious  ancestors  it  became  a  part 

[  234  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


of  my  own  heritage.  I  am  sure,  moreover, 
that  somewhere  in  that  line  I  should  find 
at  least  one  ancestor  who  was  buried  with 
his  legs  crossed,  if  indeed  he  did  not  lie 
on  the  same  hillside  as  the  graves  that  I 
saw  on  Ramah,  and  the  Mount  of  Olives 
and  at  the  foot  of  the  last  hill  outside  of 
Jerusalem  on  the  Jaffa  Road.  In  any  event 
they  who  have  in  these  late  years  and  in 
the  long  centuries  before  them  died  there 
as  Crusaders  would  give  approval  to  my 
suggestion,  if  their  “  speech  could  whisper 
out  of  the  dust” — a  dust  so  valiant  when 
breath  was  in  it,  and  so  potent  when  its 
breath  had  departed,  that,  if  one  but 
touched  it,  one  would,  though  dead,  be 
restored  to  life  as  was  the  dead  Moabite 
when  thrust  into  the  sepulchre  of  Elisha. 

This  little  land  should  be  kept  as  an 
“ internationalized”  reservation,  I  repeat. 
Perhaps  a  better  word  would  be  “mutual- 

[235] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


ized.”  This  suggestion  comes  from  a  recent 
experience  of  mine  in  being  called  upon  to 
act  as  one  of  three  trustees  to  vote  the 
majority  stock  of  a  great  American  insur¬ 
ance  company  in  its  4 ‘mutualization/’  a 
plan  under  which  all  the  policyholders  be¬ 
come  collectively  the  company,  after  pay¬ 
ing  a  reasonable  price  for  the  stock  to  the 
stockholders  who  by  inheritance  or  pur¬ 
chase  came  into  its  possession,  and  then 
make  it  the  common  property  of  all  those 
who  through  the  insurance  of  their  lives 
have  an  interest  in  it.  So  the  nations  might 
equally  “mutualize”  this  land  by  paying 
a  fair  price  to  its  present  stockholders, 
whoever  they  may  be,  and  then  keep  it 
for  the  benefit  of  all  who  have  a  spiritual 
life  interest  in  it,  making  certain  so  far  as 
that  is  humanly  possible  that  “nothing  un¬ 
clean”  enters  it  (even  to  the  putting  out 
of  the  uncleanliness  there)  nor  “any  person 

[  236  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


that  maketh  an  abomination” — such  as  the 
Germans  for  example  have  made  there  in 
some  of  their  professed  piety — “or  a  lie.” 

I  am  not  concerned  that  this  “interna¬ 
tionalized”  or  “mutualized”  reservation 
(the  “old  homestead”  of  civilization,  the 
“abandoned  farm”  of  a  wide-spread  family 
of  nations)  shall  give  support  again  to  three 
or  five  or  more  millions  of  people  by  its  re¬ 
covered  fertility  or  its  stimulated  industry. 
When  the  Devil,  looking  out  over  these 
very  hills,  offered  to  do  that  very  thing  by 
making  stones  into  bread,  the  answer  was 
that  man  was  not  to  live  by  bread  alone. 
If  it  were  merely  and  solely  a  matter  of  rais¬ 
ing  more  barley  and  wheat  and  fruits  and 
vegetables,  or  of  planting  and  nurturing 
again  the  orchards  and  groves  of  figs  and 
olives  and  oranges  and  pomegranates,  or 
of  covering  the  hills  with  flocks  and  herds, 
I  should  not  invite  the  thought  of  a  reader 

[  237  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


to  leave  his  Iowa  farm,  his  California 
groves,  his  New  York  orchard,  or  even  his 
New  England  garden;  though  I  hope  never¬ 
theless  that  the  land  will  be  made  to  “  blos¬ 
som  again  as  the  rose.”  I  should  leave, 
however,  the  temporal  interest  of  the  agri¬ 
culturist  and  the  horticulturist  and  the 
florist  and  the  advice  of  their  experts  to 
look  to  that  development. 

Nor  am  I  concerned  that  God  should 
do,  as  John  the  Baptist  intimated  to  those 
who  boasted  that  they  looked  to  Abraham 
as  their  father,  He  was  able  to  do:  raise 
up  from  the  stones  of  that  same  valley 
upon  which  the  Mount  of  Temptation 
looks  down  enough  new  sons  to  give  the 
land  the  population  which  it  is  estimated 
the  bread  made  from  the  fertilized  stones 
could  support.  Though  again,  I  should 
like  to  see  gathered  in  happiness  there  as 
many  sons  of  Abraham  as  can  in  such  a 

[  238  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


sympathetic  environment  serve  humanity 
better  than  through  the  nations  whose  life 
their  genius  has  penetrated  and  permeated. 
I  have  long  believed  and  often  said  that 
the  Jew,  by  reason  of  this  very  penetration 
and  permeation  of  his  genius  and  the  uni¬ 
versality  of  his  experience,  was  fitted  above 
others  to  help  the  nations  reach  that  inter¬ 
nationalism,  of  practice  as  well  as  of  spirit, 
through  nationality.  Perhaps  in  this  their 
ancient  homeland  they  will  have  a  greater 
opportunity  to  promote  this  desired  and 
much -sought  end;  but,  as  I  believe,  it  is 
not  to  be  by  going  alone,  by  segregating 
themselves  from  the  nations  they  have 
helped  so  marvellously  to  make,  and  be¬ 
coming  again  a  “peculiar  people”  and  a 
separate  nation.  Their  mission  even  in 
going  back  to  their  homeland  is,  as  I  be¬ 
lieve,  to  internationalize,  not  to  intensify 
and  extend  nationalization. 

[  239  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


A  Homeland  ?  Yes !  But  an  interna¬ 
tional  Homeland;  one  which  gives  welcome 
to  every  earth-child  who  turns  toward  its 
holy  hills  with  a  pure  heart  and  with  clean 
hands — not  one  which  narrows  sympathies 
or  accentuates  differences  of  race  or  creed — 
a  Homeland  whose  tenantry  shall  be  pri¬ 
marily  those  who,  like  the  families  of  Ger- 
shon,  Kohath,  and  Merari  of  old,  care  for 
the  sacred  things  of  humanity,  which  must 
now  include  the  utensils  of  democracy — 
not  a  Homeland  to  be  peopled  by  persecu¬ 
tions  or  pogroms  of  other  lands,  for  these 
can  no  longer  exist,  but  a  Homeland  re¬ 
peopled  by  its  own  appeal  to  a  humanity 
seeking  not  personal  salvation  nor  ease 
nor  pleasure,  but  a  higher  common  experi¬ 
ence  and  an  “eternal  excellence.” 

I  cannot  think  of  a  better  guide,  as  I 
have  said,  for  this  tenantry  or  a  better 
trustee  for  the  nations,  till  out  of  their 

[  240  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


varied  faiths  and  longings  the  people  of 
this  land  find  their  own  self-determined 
machinery  of  government,  than  the  coun¬ 
try  of  the  Joshua  who  redeemed  it— than 
the  country  of  4 4  Allah-Nebi,”  or,  as  it  is 
in  its  English  form,  Allenby. 

For  America  I  have  toward  this  Holy 
Land  only  this  hope,  that  the  spirit  in 
which  she  entered  the  land  through  her 
agencies  of  mercy  may  unselfishly  persist, 
and  that  in  this  spirit  she  may  liberally, 
generously,  disinterestedly  give  to  the  aid 
of  those  who  shall  be  the  Holy  Land  trus¬ 
tees.  For  this  hope  I  find  a  concrete  ex¬ 
pression  out  of  my  own  experience  on  the 
hill  overlooking  the  Holy  City. 

I  was  roused  by  a  clamor  of  bells — just 
outside  my  window  it  seemed.  Where  I 
was  I  could  not  for  the  moment  determine 
— in  Princeton,  in  New  York  City  across 
the  street  from  St.  Luke’s,  or  in  Albany 

[  241  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


on  my  sleeping-porch  beneath  the  State 
Street  Church  bell.  But  this  bell  or  group 
of  bells  was  different  in  voice.  I  found 
myself  in  the  Patriarch’s  cot,  on  the  Mount 
of  Olives,  and,  leaping  to  the  window,  I 
saw  it  was  a  priest  in  the  tower  among  the 
cypresses  summoning  to  the  early  mass. 
His  rather  primitive  chime-tune  had  its 
climax  in  a  wonderfully  beautiful  and  rich 
tone  (like  that  of  one  of  the  Russian  singers 
in  the  New  York  church  in  97th  Street), 
which,  I  found  afterward,  had  come  from 
the  bell-tower  of  the  Russian  church,  the 
Church  of  the  Ascension,  near  by. 

I  dressed  hastily  and  hurried  to  the 
chapel  across  the  court,  where  two  priests 
were  already  intoning  an  antiphonal  ser¬ 
vice.  Soon  Russian  sisters,  pilgrims,  de¬ 
tained  in  Jerusalem  by  the  war,  began  to 
slip  quietly,  almost  stealthily  in,  with  their 
white  kerchiefs  caught  tightly  under  their 

[242] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


chins — the  meekest,  most  docile,  but  de¬ 
termined  bodies  I  have  ever  seen.  They 
not  only  crossed  themselves  assiduously, 
but  bowed  repeatedly  touching  the  stone 
floor  with  their  foreheads.  Later  (for  the 
service  lasted  two  hours)  refugee  women 
from  the  city  of  Es-Salt  beyond  the  Jordan 
— large,  handsome  women  of  finely,  strongly 
moulded  faces  and  of  regal  bearing — came 
striding  in,  unabashed  that  they  were  (or 
some  of  them)  in  their  bare  feet.  One 
carried  a  child  astride  her  shoulder  with 
as  great  grace  as  a  Madonna.  There  was 
no  bowing  to  the  floor.  Then  came  the 
Es-Salt  men,  of  the  strongest  faces  and 
sturdiest  bodies  seen  in  Palestine,  their 
white  head-dress  crowned  with  a  black 
aureole.  They  stalked  with  their  heavy 
shoes  to  the  very  front  of  the  altar  and 
bowed  before  the  priests  or  made  their 
circuit  of  the  sacred  emblems  with  as  little 

[243] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


self-consciousness  as  if  they  were  in  their 
black  tents  just  outside  the  convent  walls, 
or  out  in  their  Moab  hills. 

A  sacristan,  seeing  that  I  was  a  stranger, 
brought  me  a  little  square  of  carpet  on 
which  to  stand  or  kneel,  and  then  a  chair, 
which  I  could  not  take,  according  to  our 
Western  standards,  while  the  women  stood. 
About  twenty  of  the  Russian  women  gath¬ 
ered  in  a  group  in  front  of  the  altar  and 
sang  most  impressively  their  simple  recita¬ 
tives  and  choruses.  Among  them  were 
women  of  astounding  voices.  I  said  that 
the  Russian  women  were  all  meek  in  ap¬ 
pearance.  There  was  one  exception.  A 
woman  of  sharp,  eager  face,  as  of  a  zealot, 
with  a  gray  shawl  over  her  head,  seeing 
me  standing  near  the  door,  approached  me 
and  said  in  rather  sharp  voice  (speaking 
in  French)  ‘ 'Quelle  croix?”  (What  cross?) 
I  did  not  at  first  understand  the  import 

[  244  ] 


THE  HOUSE  OF  MY  PILGRIMAGE 


of  her  inquiry,  though  I  realized  that  she 
was  putting  to  me  an  all-important  ques¬ 
tion:  Quelle  croix? — grecque  ou  latine ?” 

(“What  cross  do  you  make,  that  of  the 
Greek  Church  or  of  the  Latin  Church?”) 
My  answer  was,  66 La  Croix  Rouge ”  (the 
Red  Cross),  the  sign  of  mercy  universal, 
the  symbol  not  of  a  creed,  nor  even  of  a 
Christian  faith,  but  of  human  kinship  and 
brotherhood. 

And  in  Palestine,  of  all  lands  in  the  earth, 
where  religious  partisanship  is,  perhaps, 
most  bitter,  where  the  world’s  alms  have 
been  asked  for  the  sake  of  Abraham,  Christ, 
and  Mohammed — here  above  all  other 
places  need  to  be  invoked  and  here  above 
all  other  places  should  the  nations  find 
the  common  ground  for  the  expression  of 
their  most  exalted  common  ideal. 

Palestine  does  not  now  seem  to  me  so 
far  away.  It  is  just  over  the  edge  of  the 

[  245  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


horizon.  The  sun  now  conies  up  always 
for  me  over  the  mystical  mountains  of 
Moab  and  walks  with  shining  sandals  upon 
the  waters  of  the  Dead  Sea,  where  I  saw  it 
so  often  from  the  Mount  of  Olives,  which 
is  also  known  as  the  “Mountain  of  Light.” 
The  sun  now  goes  down  always  in  the  glory 
that  hangs  over  “Jerusalem  the  Golden.” 
The  crescent  moon  will  always  have  beneath 
it  the  dome  of  the  Mosque  of  Omar  that 
stands  near  the  site  of  the  Temple  of  Solo¬ 
mon.  The  stars,  since  my  journey  by  night 
from  Beersheba,  will  always  be  those  that 
Abraham  was  unable  to  count,  and  the 
twilight  shadows  will  always  be  those  that 
gather  in  the  Valley  of  Kidron  about  the 
Garden  of  Gethsemane. 

It  is  this  land  that  I  should  like  to  put 
upon  every  horizon. 


[246] 


XIV 


A  LA  TERRE  SAINTE 
some  gray  pilgrim  of  the  Middle 


Age 


(And  I  am  of  the  middle  age  my¬ 
self, 

That  age  when  all  is  mystical — or  else 

All  practical — when  truth  of  spirit  seems 

More  real  than  all  the  buoyant  world  of 
youth, 

When  ever  on  the  known’s  dim  edge  one 
dwells, 

Ever  in  conscious  awe  of  what’s  beyond. 

That  age  when  seen  things  are  but  counter¬ 
part 

Of  things  unseen,  or  else  the  memory 

Of  something  that  has  been — the  happiest 


age 


[  247  ] 


A  PILGRIM  IN  PALESTINE 


Of  man  and  life,  unwithered  yet  of  time 

Yet  free  of  all  youth’s  blinding  loves  and 
hates), — 

As  some  gray  pilgrim  of  the  Middle  Age 

I  face  each  risen  day,  or  bright  or  dull, 

Tempestuous  or  calm,  and  pray  my  soul 

Long  leagues  upon  the  way  that  souls  must 
take 

Before  they  reach  the  far  and  fair  Terre 
Sainte 

Whose  shadow-bounded  stretches  we  di¬ 
vine 

But  in  our  longing  for  immortal  life. 

’Mid  dust  of  earth,  in  heat  and  cold  and 
rain, 

O’er  far-horizoned  heights,  through  narrow 
vales. 

Accompanied  of  glowing  sun,  or  cloud. 

Of  one  clear  star  or  of  the  ’circling  host. 

My  body  journeys  on  through  aging  time, 

[  248  ] 


A  LA  TERRE  SAINTE 


But  not  to  find  an  empty,  open  tomb 
As  one  who  sought  the  Asian  sepulchre, — 
I  seek  the  Kingdom  of  the  Risen  one, 
Within. — Long,  long  and  toilsome  is  the 
way, 

Unceasing  must  the  struggle  onward  be, 
But  there’s  no  other  way  a  la  Terre  Sainte, 
A  la  Terre  Sainte ! 


[  249  ] 


XV 


ODYSSEUS’  BARK 


O  DREAD  Poseidon 

Who  didst  turn  to  stone 
Odysseus’  bark 
And  anchor  it 
Beside  the  lovely  isle 
Where  goddess-like  Nausicaa 
Still  plays  at  ball 
’Mid  shadows  violet 
With  her  shrill  maids, 

Loose  thou  this  ship, 

With  sombre  cypresses  for  masts 
With  dark  monastic  cells 
For  cabins,  and  the  close, 
Abloom,  for  deck ! 

Loose  it,  I  pray, 

[  250  ] 


Odysseus’  Bark 


ODYSSEUS’  BARK 


From  its  long  anchorage 
And  let  it  take  me  back 
To  my  loved  Ithaca — 

An  island  grown  to  continent, 
America, 

Lying  beyond  the  seas 
That  are  “the  baths 
Of  all  the  Western  stars.” 

Corfu,  1918. 


[  251  ] 


Date  Due 


■:«n>  Alt 

b 

tfiair-r-r1 

fa..''*" 

FAUuLI 

y 

■■  _  --r^BHSsgy 

f  WiuitY 

yjjdpujJi 

13  L  m 

,  <? 

-QCP  &HA 

r 

f) 

